Dear Friend,

Here’s a story that proves that in order to prosper in business you need to be prepared to give something away in order to eventually harvest success.

Either that, or it shows that it always pays to operate with Machiavellian deviousness!

This is a true story to me this morning by Michelle Worvell, the editor of one of our sister titles Insurance Age.

Today is the first of December and time for Advent calendars to be cracked open, and time for children and children-at-heart everywhere to open the 1st door on the countdown to Christmas Eve.

As a child Michelle used to share a calendar with her younger sister. Every year when December the first came around, you can imagine the excitement, as parents unwrapped the cellophane and the chocs come tantalisingly close.

Then comes the inevitable question “Who’s going to open the first one?”

“Me, Me, Me!” comes the inevitable squeal from the younger of the two.

Then in an unexpected flowering of philanthropy Michelle pipes up to her younger sister:

“Go on, you have it”

Younger sister devours the first chocolate of the year, parents are stunned and proud of their older daughter.

Praise is heaped on Michelle from all quarters — that letter to Santa looks like getting answered in full this year.

Said older daughter takes the praise and smiles deviously to herself know that tomorrow it will be her turn to open number 2. She can’t believe that she has done it again!

She is going to get the even numbers and will be scoffing the immense pièce de resistance, gran finale, Archangel Gabriel of all chocolates on the 24th of December!

Talk about a win-win situation! Sucker your sister whilst making out that you are doing her a favour.

Brokers — there’s got to be a way of using this technique with underwriters — I just can’t quite figure out what it is yet!

---------- Reinsurance Book ---------

All this talk of Christmas has made me think of Christmas presents and how tricky it is to find the right gift for the person who has everything.

Are you a catastrophe broker or underwriter — or do you know one and don’t know what to buy them for Christmas? Maybe you just want to learn a bit more about this discipline? Well, I’ve got the perfect stocking-filler for you!

The other day I found out that we had a books division in our company one floor down from us and that they publish titles on reinsurance. It just seems crazy that no-one had bothered to tell the editor of reinsurance magazine about this before!

Anyway they publish a really great book called Catastrophe Risk and Reinsurance — A country Risk Management perspective.

It’s got contributions from top brains at the World Bank, EQECAT, Swiss Re, Munich Re, Columbia University, the Wharton School of business, amongst others. Boffins galore — what this lot don’t know about Cat risk probably isn’t worth knowing.

And all that knowledge is contained in 311 fully-indexed pages.

Edouard Schmid of Swiss Re describes it as “A comprehensive summary of the tools and prerequisites for natural catastrophe financing schemes, based on practical examples and top expert input from around the world”

Job done! One less Christmas present to worry about.
Catastrophe Risk and Reinsurance will do the trick!