Airmic member wins European Risk Management Award

Marina, winner of the Innovative Insurance Programme of the Year award in the European Risk Management Awards 2021, manages insurances in EMEA for US-based global food giant Cargill, as well as Cargill’s global transport and stock programmes. She is an active member of Airmic, including membership of its Learning and Development Committee and the Captive Special Interest Group.

The European Risk Management Awards, organised by the Federation of European Risk Management Associations (FERMA) and Commercial Risk Europe, recognised her restructuring of Cargill’s marine cargo and stocks insurance programme from 1 January 2020. The award jury, composed of insurance and risk managers, was impressed by the innovative implementation and the team effort that delivered the reinsurance captive structure.

It was the second major recognition of 2021 for Marina, who also received the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) Swiss Re Reinsurance Prize for the best result in the reinsurance unit on completion of the advanced diploma in insurance qualification.

Currently based in Switzerland, Marina has worked in global insurance for Cargill for more than 13 years. She started with the company’s Russian subsidiary Cargill Yug. She has a degree in economics, a post-graduate diploma in maritime law and the CII advanced diploma.

Marina says she became a risk and insurance manager because this profession introduces you to and requires you to understand different areas of a business. “As Cargill is a multinational company operating various businesses in multiple countries, there are constant opportunities for learning and professional growth.”

When it comes to Cargill’s marine cargo and stocks insurance programme, Marina explains that this is a large programme that fulfils important functions of business support, regulatory compliance and valuable risk-pooling for the group. The restructuring was intended to preserve these functions while capturing positive underwriting results by retaining more risk in house through the captive.

The work had to be completed quickly, which could have been problematic for a programme of this size. Therefore, one of the objectives and the originality of the execution involved keeping much of the ‘business-facing’ set-up unchanged, while focusing on the risk financing side. Accordingly, routine insurance processes for the operating businesses remained largely the same and disruptions were minimised. 

The introduction and implementation of the reinsurance captive structure took involved collaboration between multiple internal stakeholders within the global insurance team and across several regions, and with the selected broker and insurance carrier. The project was delivered within a year as intended, with programme inception from 1 January 2020.

 “The restructuring of our marine open cover programme has benefitted Cargill in several ways,” says Marina. “It strategically aligned the programme with Cargill’s higher corporate risk tolerance, allowing the consolidated company to retain risk and improve total cost of risk (TCOR), while giving the subsidiaries the support and protection they’ve always appreciated.”

 “The new structure came into force as the insurance markets moved into the hardening stage of the cycle, which enabled Cargill to mitigate the impact of the hard market on the businesses. The structure will need to be monitored and adapted as necessary to the changing conditions. At the same time, it offers the necessary flexibility to drive further improvements.”

More information about the 2021 European Risk Management Awards.  Nominations for the 2022 awards will open in March.