Juan Pablo Salazar Country Corporate Officer, Marsh & McLennan Colombia

Focusing on specialization by industry, Marsh is able to closely advise its clients based on its deep knowledge and expertise of the opportunities and risks of various sectors.

BIO Juan Pablo Salazar is the Country Corporate Officer for the three lines of business of MarshMcLennan in Colombia (Mercer, Guy Carpenter, and Marsh). He graduated in law and holds a master’s in insurance law. He has more than 30 years of experience in the broker sector and more than 18 years in executive roles related to corporate management and management of commercial, technical, and operative lines. In 2013, he was named CEO of Marsh Colombia. He is the president and an active member of the board of directors of ACOAS.

How are you accompanying and aiding your partners through the pandemic?

The risk assessment of many industries and companies did not factor in the risk of a pandemic or the possibility of a global paralysis of the economy. However, within the insurance community, virus and disease modelling had been a focus of our studies. We have a product called Risk Focus that incorporates the risk of total paralysis and pandemic risk. One of our subsidiary companies, Oliver Wyman, created a global tool called Pandemic Navigator that has the ability to model the risk exposure of countries, industries, cities, and individual companies in order to understand, using the experience of the first four months, the industries that will be most affected and how governments are reacting. In the next pandemic, people and public bodies will not react the same way. This makes it possible to model the exposure of countries, industries, and companies based on the understanding of their risks. With the pandemic, many industries have seen, from a business perspective, excellent results because there were opportunities to offer solutions and capabilities. In parallel, we are working with government bodies and unions to offer these moderation capabilities and bring risk management solutions into play. The first thing we do is analysis, risk management, and impact modeling. We are also working with global insurance companies to create transfer solutions that specifically cover the loss of benefits from business paralysis because of a pandemic. Risk is an accelerator of people’s awareness of exposure to these risks; however, the biggest risk to humanity is climate change. At present, that analysis of the exposure of countries’ economies, industries, and companies to the negative effects of climate change is on the table.

As a company focused on revealing opportunities to clients, what are some opportunity areas that companies may not be seeing?

We have a positive view of the risks. The art lies in knowing the risks associated with an activity. The company that takes the greatest risk, while knowing and understanding it, will be the most successful. That along with the need of strengthening their sustainable and resilient capabilities. What we do in these studies is ask our customers, the companies, if they are

capable of a higher risk retention and if they are financially able to bear it, because insurance companies have to compete with other ways of risk financing. These questions help us to understand if it is a risk that should be managed and financed within the company, externalized to a supplier, or transferred to the insurance sector or capital market.

How do you ensure that you can assist different types of customers, and what platforms do you offer your customers?

The key when talking about customers is specialization by industry. This is global. We have experts in mining, energy, generation, and financial institutions, and they are people who have deep knowledge and speak the language of their industry. They are the communication channel to the risk front and transparency of risks to the insurance sector. We also have risk mapping by industry. What we bring to our customers is the whole world of that industry, the specific risks by amount and impact or by frequency, and we help them understand the point of maturity they are at. As far as tools are concerned, we are about to launch the whole issue of analytics in which, through a link, our customers will be able to enter and map with their insurance program their cyber, property, managing directors, and civil liability risk, as well as comparing it at a global level. We do not reach our customers with a product, but rather with a solution. We come in and look at a customer’s needs, and the point and degree of maturity at which the customer is at. In that case, we provide various solutions to the customer in their particular situation.

What steps is Marsh taking to ensure that it remains the industry leader amid these new trends?

Globally, four years ago, we decided to analyze the segmentation of the organization. We see the business in three big sectors. We have risk management, which are the large companies, large multinationals, medium-sized companies, and a large number of customers that are in medium-sized, small, or micro-companies. Our intention is to have an individualized value proposition for large and medium-sized companies and to offer the others a standardized product under the best conditions, but always with a union or through one of the distribution channels. If you look at the portfolio, those are clients assisted by other channels, local agencies, or agents. Marsh’s biggest investments globally in recent years have been in the development of digital technology tools to join the insurance sector with these personal customers, with these micro-companies, with these insurance sponsors. We bring in the right talent, which means digital experts and specialists in marketing and commercial issues. We do not necessarily need insurance experts, because the last thing we do is create the product. We understand the need, design it, and bring it to an insurance company that wants to provide these functions.