Here you can find some of the interviews I gave or opinion articles I was asked to write over my 24-years career. They focus on agriculture, agricultural reinsurance (including dedicated interviews and articles on the matters of aquaculture and livestock insurance and reinsurance), microinsurance and sales and marketing techniques to enhance client-centricity of the insurance sector in low-income or transition markets.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT  

I gave this interview to the Ukrainian Insurance Club in 2018 (page 16). In it, I defend the need for the Ukrainian insurance market to be more client-centric and less focused on price as a way to recruit and retain more clients. I defended these ideas on several roundtables and workshops organized by the IFC (World Bank Group) of which I was a part of in Kyiv. Click on the PDF to read the original document.

This is my first article of opinion. I wrote it in 1997. It was published together with other 3 articles from well-known agriculture personalities in Portugal.

In this article I reflect and call up several questions on the need for the Universities in Portugal to have a deeper connection with the outer society and prepare their students for the job market with pertinent skills required for the country to develop itself.

​Livestock

Article of opinion on the need to insure livestock, in particular, dairy animals against disease and other perils (pages 15 and 16). We did this insurance cover for ABLN, a Portuguese association dedicated to the improve productivity and quality of dairy animals in the Northern region of Portugal. This insurance was done in collaboration with Portuguese insurance company CA Seguros with whom we made a strategic partnership as they were specialised in agriculture. 

Click on the PDF to read the original document.

Article of opinion on aquaculture insurance, its modalities and perils to which a fish farm operation is subjected to (pages 16 and 17). This magazine is edited and published by the Global Aquaculture Alliance. Click on the picture to access the original article.

A set of interviews on Agricultural Insurance and Reinsurance when I was Head of the EMEA agriculture specialty at Guy Carpenter (MMC Group). Usually agriculture specialty requires Reinsurance companies to look for country-wide programs that have a good spread of risk, and according to the Law of Large Numbers, may be more predictable in the future regarding their underwriting results. Agriculture events can have a high intensity and localised event patterns though some can be have a systemic nature (like flood), affecting large areas (usually governments will take care of those). If you only underwrite one sole crop, in a limited geographical region (e.g. one farm dedicated to one crop or a sole livestock farm) you are exposing yourself to a sure loss whenever an event occurs. If you underwrite a portfolio of risks, a particular event may affect one area and not the other, leaving the portfolio's balance between premiums and losses with a positive sign.   That's why underwriters usually avoid agricultural facultative reinsurance risks (e.g. one sole farm being covered) and prefer Treaty business (portfolios of an insurance company or a Government comprising a number of crops or insured units, with geographical spread as well). However, there are some classes of agricultural risk that can be insured in a facultative way (Livestock, Forestry, Aquaculture) in particular as they are niche, very specialised classes of insurance that require good knowledge on their operations and features.

Click on the picture to access the original article.