Highlights from GIRO: Hannah Turner looks back on the 2025 conference

Our general insurance team was at the IFoA GIRO Conference 2025 from 19th-21st November in Liverpool. Held at the Exhibition Centre, the event brought together over 130 expert speakers and hundreds of general insurance professionals to connect with their peers, deepen their expertise and celebrate industry achievements. Let’s look at my key reflections from this year’s conference.

Pricing transformation remains a key trend

From our conversations with actuaries, pricing transformation remains a key priority for general insurers. Indeed, the results of our Actuarial UK Skills and Workplace Attitudes Survey, conducted during August and September, reveal that pricing is the most common kind of transformation respondents have been involved with in their career, selected by 47.9%. As insurers switch from Excel to software such as Emblem, Radar, Python and hx Renew, this is only likely to continue.

The variety of topics being talked about

What struck us as a team was the sheer variety of talks on offer, with the topics being discussed ranging from AI and climate change to current issues and trends within capital modelling and reserving. Some highlights from speaking to those who attended were the Bank of Dave opening talk, Navigating the future of autonomous vehicles and London market digital transformation: millions invested – why has so little changed?

How emerging risks will affect the insurance industry

It’s very interesting to note the volume and scale of emerging risks we are facing as an industry, and we’ve already seen how catastrophe insurance losses are affecting the US insurance market. One talk in particular looked at the potential increase of wildfires in the UK and the impact this could have on insurance, which posed some interesting food for thought.

Focus on FIA

Clients are still keen to bring in strong talent at the FIA level, which is unsurprising when you consider the importance of limiting their investment risk in a challenging financial climate. At the same time, senior candidates are starting to think about what they want to achieve in their career for next year. 2026 is already shaping up to be a busy year.

Get in touch with us

It was another excellent GIRO and thanks to all those who made it happen. For us, it was great to catch up with everyone both at the conference, and at the hx networking drinks, to discuss the market and current trends and put faces to names of those in our network. Many congratulations to our raffle winner, Isabelle from LCP, who claims a £250 Gordon Ramsay restaurant voucher!

If you want to talk about hiring an actuary for your team or finding an actuarial role in the general insurance industry, or you’d like to request a copy of our Actuarial UK Skills and Workplace Attitudes Survey, please get in touch with me.