Well, hello and welcome to 2021, a new year for all of us, and third year of releasing the

Instech London podcast, which just goes to show either its survival of the fittest or perseverance pays off.

Matthew Grant here, one of the two partners at Insteak London, and thank you again for joining this.

Now, if this is your first time listening, well, we are, of course, delighted

you could join us, but this is slightly different format to our usual interviews. Typically,

it's me talking to one or two people. Well, this time we've got 20. Now, at this time of year,

people tend to be making their predictions for the year ahead, very brave, but given the surprises

of the last year, it wasn't really something

that Rob and I thought we wanted to do on our own. So we reached into our network and got 20 fantastic

people from some of the greatest companies in insurance and technology, all of whom, by the way,

with one exception, are corporate members. We sent them a bottle of wine and we asked them

for their views on the future.

And now, thanks to the power of Zoom, we are bringing you our crowdsourced and curated forecast for 2021. Well, frankly, I reckon the quality of insights we got in one hour would have taken a month

or two if part of a more traditional consulting research project. And of course, for you, it is free.

What follows are the edited highlights, but look out for some consistent themes coming throughout this. You're going to hear about the power of platforms, the move to more risk

management, as well as underwriting. We're going to be talking about power of platforms, the move to more risk management as well as underwriting.

We're going to be talking about a real shift what we expect to see coming in the year ahead

related to climate change, both the measurement and action around that. Paramedic insurance gets a few

mentions as to cyber risk and collaboration and acquisition between insuredex as well as some more traditional

insurers is going to increase. And finally, we're going to hear about the threat to insurance by

one of the largest companies in the world. That looks to be ever more real. Well, thanks to John

Needham and his colleagues at PKF for sponsoring. John kicked off with a topic that is close to

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