PT Asuransi Asei Indonesia

Wahyudin Rahman

Emerging Risk Strategist

Over more than 20 years in the industry, I have worked across different functions, from underwriting and product development to risk management. These experiences have shaped my belief that innovation is not simply about creating new products. It is about understanding how risks are changing and turning that understanding into relevant and sustainable solutions for clients and the market.

Understanding Risk before Insuring It

For me, every innovation begins with curiosity. Before developing a product, we must first understand the risk we want to insure. This becomes even more important with emerging risks, where historical loss data may be limited.

In my experience, there are three major challenges in developing new insurance products; understanding the risk, ensuring adequate data and securing appropriate reinsurance capacity. These elements are closely connected.

Data is critical because many emerging risks lack sufficient historical loss experience. Research, scenario analysis and sound assumptions therefore become essential for pricing, limits, deductibles and risk appetite.

Reinsurance capacity is equally important. For risks with potentially high severity or accumulation, reinsurers should be involved from the beginning, not simply at the end of product development. They should be partners in understanding the risk, assessing its potential impact and determining an appropriate capacity structure.

This approach is particularly relevant when developing solutions for cyber risks; climate change, including carbon offset, disaster and parametric products; energy risks, especially renewable energy & energy saving insurance; and specialized risks such as bullion or gold. Each requires a different underwriting approach.

Before we insure a risk, we must understand how it behaves and have sufficient data, analysis and capacity to stand behind the promise we make.

Products Need an Ecosystem

A good product cannot succeed without the right ecosystem. Innovation requires collaboration among underwriting, brokers, clients, reinsurers, actuarial teams, claims, legal, risk management and distribution channels.

Product development is more than creating policy wording and setting a premium. We need to understand the target customer, the problem we solve, how the risk is measured, how claims are handled and how the product reaches the market.

The same principle applies to retail insurance. Packaged or bundled products can make insurance more accessible by bringing relevant protections into a simple proposition. The challenge is to manage underwriting complexity behind the scenes while creating a straightforward experience for customers.

Ultimately, innovation must create a sustainable source of business. A product needs to be technically sound, commercially relevant, properly distributed and supported by an ecosystem that allows it to grow.

From Product Development to Market Creation

Developing a new product also means creating a market. Emerging risks are not always immediately understood by clients, brokers or even the insurance industry. This is where leadership matters.

I believe an influential leader is not simply someone with knowledge or ideas, but someone who can connect those ideas with market needs, build trust and encourage others to act.

Writing, sharing perspectives and educating the market are part of innovation. When we introduce solutions for cyber, climate risk, renewable energy, energi saving insurance, carbon offset, parametric risks or bullion, we are not simply selling insurance. We are helping the market understand risks that may previously have received limited attention.

The better the market understands emerging risks, the greater the opportunity to create relevant insurance solutions.

Innovation that Becomes Sustainable Business

Innovation cannot remain an interesting idea. A product must be underwritable, appropriately priced, structured clearly, supported by reinsurance capacity and capable of delivering a good claims experience. Creativity and underwriting discipline are not opposites. The best innovation combines the courage to think differently with the discipline to measure risk carefully.

After more than two decades in insurance, I believe future competitiveness will depend not only on the size of an insurer’s portfolio, but on how quickly it can understand changing risks and transform them into relevant solutions.

Innovation is turning risks we do not yet fully understand into risks we can measure, transforming them into insurable solutions and building the ecosystem that allows those solutions to become sustainable business.

I do not want merely to develop new insurance products. I want to help build a new way of thinking about insurance, more courageous, disciplined and creative in developing solutions for the future.

That, to me, is the true meaning of innovation in insurance: not following change, but helping shape the future of the industry.