Pa-biełarusku ŭ Imia Baćki Miehatrona! Adrazu bačna - deseptykonskaja ahučka.

Aug 04, 2025 (Geneva, Switzerland) – The International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI), is pleased and honored to announce the 2025 class of Academy Fellows. IAHSI, the Academy of the I...

Congratulations to Antoine Geissbuhler and Charles Safran the co-recipients of the 2025  IMIA François Grémy Award for lifetime achievement, and congratulations to Marion J. Ball, EdD, FLHIMSS, FCHIME...

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Recommendations of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) on Education in Biomedical and Health Informatics: Second Revision Elsevier 2023 The purpose of educational recommendations ...

Mr Richard Radevsky, Chair of the International Association of Engineering Insurers (“IMIA”), Members of the IMIA Executive Committee, Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen — good morning. 1 It is my pleasure to join you today at the 59th IMIA Annual Conference. 2 IMIA was in Singapore earlier this year to hold the IMIA Academy. It is good to see you back again for this Conference. A Region Being Built 3 I would like to start with a simple observation. Look around Asia today. Almost everywhere, something is being built. New grids, new railways, new data centres, new power plants and renewable energy projects. The scale is considerable. 4 The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that Southeast Asia needs around US$210 billion of infrastructure investment every year, to maintain its economic growth, tackle poverty, and address climate impacts.[1] 5 Take a case for reference, the ASEAN Power Grid or APG in short. ASEAN is estimated to need more than US$100 billion of investment in transmission infrastructure over the next two decades.[2] * Projects under the APG are among the region's largest infrastructure undertaking. They will also be technically complex. * Large cross-border subsea interconnectors can stretch across long distances and difficult terrain. They are exposed to seabed conditions, maritime activity and extreme weather. * They also span multiple jurisdictions, contractors and operating environments, requiring coordination across different technical design standards, construction practices, and regulatory requirements. 6 Or consider data centres. Demand for digital services and artificial intelligence is driving the development of data centres across Asia. * They are among the fastest‑growing infrastructure investments in the region. Asia‑Pacific is expected to require more than US$280 billion in additional data‑centre capacity by 2030.[3] * Within each building is a concentration of high‑value equipment, dense power systems and complex cooling requirements. * And along with these, thousands of dependencies. 7 Here in Singapore, projects such as the proposed Western Island[4] will involve large‑scale marine reclamation, advanced manufacturing and future power‑generation infrastructure on a single site. 8 All these infrastructure developments require an enormous amount of engineering. And behind that engineering is risk. * Someone has to understand that risk. * Someone has to reduce it. * And someone ultimately has to bear it. 9 This is where the insurance industry has an important role to play. I would describe that role in three parts: understanding risk, reducing risk, and connecting risk with capital. Understanding Risk 10 The first is understanding risk. 11 Understanding risk has always been central to insurance. But the basis on which risk is assessed is becoming more complex. 12 In many cases, technology is developing faster than the loss experience needed or available to price risk with confidence. 13 Historical loss data may no longer provide sufficient guidance. * Sometimes the risk is new. * Sometimes the technology is new. * And sometimes the location is new. 14 As a result, underwriters and risk engineers are increasingly required to exercise expert judgement, often with limited historical reference points. 15 This is particularly the case where technologies are still maturing, projects are deployed in new environments, or interactions or dependencies between different systems are not yet fully understood. 16 This is where institutions such as IMIA add practical value. * By pooling experience across markets, learnings from one project can improve underwriting and risk-management practices on the next. * IMIA's working groups and technical forums provide platforms for sharing expertise – on data-centre construction, biodiesel conversions, artificial intelligence in construction, ground conditions and tunnelling. All of which are highly relevant today. * And this ability to turn individual experience into collective knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable in Asia, given the scope and scale of projects we are seeing. Reducing Risk 17 Understanding risk, however, is only the beginning. 18 As underlying risks increase, trying to transfer more of them also becomes more expensive. 19 Therefore, we need to reduce risk when decisions or choices we make can still influence them – at project planning and construction. * This also means the role of the insurer is no longer simply a payer of claims, but also a trusted risk adviser. * Involving insurers and risk conversations upstream allows risk engineers to shape decisions while they can still be adjusted. 20 For many large-scale infrastructure or engineering projects, the biggest opportunity to strengthen resilience is often at the point before an asset is built or commissioned. 21 The engineering insurers already understand this. * You review designs, examine construction practices and maintenance standards, inspect projects, and recommend changes. * Sometimes, these can appear to be small and mundane changes, such as tightening inspection and maintenance regimes for fire‑protection systems. But these relatively modest changes can prevent significant losses. 22 The benefits of these interventions depend not just on risk engineers identifying and underwriting the risks, but also on project owners, financiers and contractors recognising and acting on them. And ultimately, these benefits also accrue to them. 23 A consistent approach to assessing resilience can help bring greater clarity to how risks are identified and addressed during project development. * There are industry frameworks that seek to translate engineering-level resilience measures into information usable by insurers and financiers. The Building Resilience Index developed by the International Finance Corporation which the IMIA discussed at one of its conferences in Singapore last year, is one such example. Several industry players have also advocated for its adoption, for a common language on resilience-by-design. 24 For project developers and asset owners, this can reduce the cost of financing and risk protection. 25 For insurers, they provide a more consistent basis for assessing how resilience measures influence underlying risk exposures over time. Connecting Risk with Capital 26 But even with the best engineering and risk management measures, some risks will remain, and must ultimately be borne. 27 Given the scale of Asia’s infrastructure needs, and growing and increasing risk exposures, expanding and accessing new risk-bearing capacity will also be important. * In 2025, Asia accounted for around 30% of global economic losses from natural catastrophes, yet only about 8% of those losses were insured.[5] * Traditional insurance and reinsurance will remain central. * Alternative sources of capital can complement this capacity, by broadening the pool available to absorb risk. 28 Insurance-linked securities or ILS provide one way of bringing insurance risk and capital markets together. * For investors, they provide exposure to risks that may behave differently from traditional financial assets. * For the sponsors and cedants, they can provide an additional source of risk absorption capacity alongside conventional reinsurance. 29 Singapore has been steadily building out the ecosystem needed to support the growing needs for risk transfer. 30 We have been supporting the growth of the ILS market in Asia since 2018. * More than 30 ILS have been issued and listed in Singapore to date, covering perils such as storms, earthquakes and floods globally and in the region. * Earlier this year, the ADB issued two disaster-relief bonds covering earthquake and extreme-precipitation risks in the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. The World Bank also issued a catastrophe bond covering hurricane risk in Jamaica in May this year. The bonds are listed on the Singapore Exchange and supported by the MAS ILS Grant Scheme. * The scheme helps to defray ILS issuance costs in Singapore. Its objective is to help build a market where the cumulation of issuances build the expertise of lawyers, modellers, arrangers and administrators, and investors who understand the product. 31 These issuances create a complementary system to our existing network of insurers and reinsurers, where risks can be structured, modelled, transferred and funded through more channels. 32 This brings me to another step that Singapore is taking. 33 In July this year, MAS announced that we are developing a Protected Cell Company framework, which will support more efficient structures for ILS, captive insurance and sovereign risk pools. * This framework will provide legal segregation of assets and liabilities within a single corporate structure, allowing different risk arrangements to be managed independently while sharing common infrastructure and administration. * This can reduce the cost and complexity of establishing multiple special purpose vehicles, and support more ILS, captive and sovereign risk transfer solutions over time. 34 At scale, large infrastructure projects exposed to low‑frequency, high‑severity risks make these alternative risk transfer arrangements particularly relevant. * Such tail risks are less easily diversified within traditional insurance balance sheets. 35 For these arrangements to function effectively, engineering insurers are a key part of this value chain. * You understand how assets perform, how failures occur and which risk-management measures are effective. * This helps to strengthen the data, models and assessments on which risk-transfer decisions are based. Building Capabilities for the Future 36 And as we strengthen the risk transfer ecosystem, we need to build the talent pool alongside it. * IMIA works closely with the Singapore College of Insurance (SCI) and the General Insurance Association (GIA) to support capability development for the engineering insurance sector through training, knowledge-sharing and professional exchanges. * SCI also provides a wide range of training courses for insurance professionals. To strengthen the local talent pipeline, MAS, through the Financial Sector Development Fund, provides funding support of up to 70% for eligible individuals attending these training courses. 37 We encourage industry professionals to make use of these resources to deepen expertise and support the continued development of engineering insurance capabilities in Singapore and the region. Closing 38 Let me conclude. Asia does not simply need more insurance capacity. It needs more “risk capacity”. The capacity to understand risk, to reduce it, to price it. And the financial capacity to absorb what remains. 39 Engineering insurers have an important role to play to increase this risk capacity. You see the entire chain – from design to construction, operation and in some cases, failure. Your expertise to help stakeholders understand, reduce and mitigate risks determine how much resilience can be built into a complex project through the value chain. 40 This perspective will be important, as Asia builds the infrastructure for its next stage of growth. And in Singapore, where capital, talent, and risk converge, we offer you the ideal platform to hold these conversations. 41 The discussions over the next few days will give rise to new ideas, and give shape to new solutions. And turn our collective knowledge about risks into greater resilience. 42 I wish you a successful conference ahead. Thank you. *** * Source: Greening Southeast Asia’s Infrastructure Pipeline | Asian Development Bank  * Source: ASEAN Power Grid | Asian Development Bank  * Source: Asia Pacific Data Centre Investment Landscape | Cushman & Wakefield  * Source: National Day Rally 2026 | Prime Minister's Office Singapore  * Source: The regional reveal: what drives growth in insured losses? | Swiss Re