Kigali hosted risk managers, chief financial officers, and insurance executives from fourteen countries this June as OLEA convened its first Pan-African Corporate Risk Forum at the Kigali Convention Centre. Over two days, delegates worked through the questions that keep African risk professionals up at night: currency exposure on multi-country programs, climate volatility, regulatory divergence, and the widening gap between insured and economic losses on the continent.
What the forum covered
Sessions were deliberately practical. A workshop on program structuring walked delegates through the mechanics of coordinating cover across jurisdictions with different admitted-insurance rules. A claims round table examined real (anonymised) large-loss case studies, tracing where settlements stalled and what documentation would have accelerated them. A regulatory panel brought together supervisors and compliance leads to discuss the direction of travel for capital requirements and mandatory local retention across East and West Africa.
The recurring theme was coordination. African corporates increasingly operate across five, ten, or more countries, yet many still buy insurance country by country, policy by policy. Delegates consistently identified fragmented placement as the single largest source of uninsured exposure in their portfolios.
Why Kigali
Rwanda's capital was a natural venue. It is one of the continent's fastest-growing conference destinations, and it is home to OLEA's Rwandan operation, which coordinates cover for corporate clients across the region. "The conversations we had this week are the conversations we have with clients every day," said the OLEA Rwanda team. "Bringing them into one room simply makes the market smarter, and a smarter market is good for every buyer of insurance in Africa."
OLEA intends to make the forum an annual event, rotating between its regional hubs. Clients who would like the session materials or an introduction to any of the speakers can contact our Kigali office.