Has the world moved on from Monte Carlo?
After a 2-year enforced hiatus, the Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous looms large once again. A gathering of the ‘great and the good’ of the (re)insurance world. It is like no other ‘conference’; no central venue or hall, no long list of speakers or breakout sessions, and no disappointingly inadequate lunches in a box.
About 10 years ago, as I set off for my first ever Rendez-Vous, I was mid-way between Heathrow and Nice, studiously reading through the packed agenda of a leading member of the great and the good. The man next to me asked what I was reading. It was a meticulous agenda of the next three and a half days, every 15 minutes planned, every meeting prepped for, a detailed biography on each of the 40 plus key individuals from those meetings. After a few minutes it dawned on me that the unknown gentleman next to me had his own page in the dossier. After quietly surveying his career highlights and the desired meeting outcomes attributed to his 15 minutes, I told a white lie about the reading material and closed the dossier.
A decade on and I know who I’ll be sitting next to and talking to on the plane, but I am looking forward to all the other chance meetings Monte Carlo affords. And that is the point of it all. Whether planned or by chance, there is nothing quite like it for those fleeting or meaningful encounters. Certainly, this is what I’ve always thought.
But the world is a very different place to what it was a couple of years ago. Geopolitically, the world seems darker and more dangerous. Economically, the headwinds are fierce and foreboding. And the way we work has changed, in part, permanently. During Covid we had to adapt almost overnight. Across our industry, work rulebooks were either hastily updated, re-written or just ripped up.
Now, in this semi-post Covid/post caring about Covid working environment, many more flexible, smarter, more efficient ways of working and meeting prevail. You might question going into the office just for one meeting which can be done just as efficiently over Teams or Zoom. So, would you question the need and expense of doing so in Monte Carlo? Perhaps. I’m intrigued to find out.