Exercising Supply Chain Disruption With A Boutique Lloyd’s Market Reinsurer

Our client, a specialist insurance and reinsurance Lloyd’s of London syndicate. As a prominent player in the international insurance market, the team focuses on short-tail property and casualty risks, including catastrophe reinsurance, marine, aviation, and energy sectors.

Operating under the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulations, they maintain rigorous risk management standards and regulatory compliance requirements.

The insurer’s team required a comprehensive, severe yet plausible crisis simulation exercise to test their preparedness for complex, multi-faceted operational disruptions. The challenge was multifold:

“Our primary objectives involved us validating the effectiveness of existing crisis management protocols under extreme stress and identifying potential gaps in cross-departmental coordination during prolonged disruptions. We also needed to test the resilience of critical business functions under simultaneous operational pressures and assess leadership decision-making capabilities during cascading crisis scenarios.”

The engagement consisted of a structured five-phase approach designed to provide comprehensive assessment and actionable insights.

• Strategic Documentation Review: First, a comprehensive analysis of existing crisis management frameworks, business continuity protocols, and technology recovery procedures. This phase includes evaluation of current IBS and ITOL definitions alongside review of previous scenario testing outcomes to establish a baseline understanding.
• Bespoke Scenario Development: A collaborative development of tailored SBP scenarios through engagement with subject matter experts. The scenario design incorporates analysis of historical incidents, current threat landscape intelligence, and relevant industry trends to ensure realistic and challenging test conditions. Deliverables include finalised scenario documentation and comprehensive pre-briefing materials.
• Technical Recovery and Business Continuity Workshops: Facilitated workshops designed to map comprehensive technical recovery and business continuity strategies. These sessions challenge existing assumptions and validate recovery timelines and impact mitigation approaches through structured analysis and discussion.
• Crisis Exercise Implementation: The chosen delivery options were a hybrid exercise which included an enhanced role-play approach featuring simulated "Gold" command sessions with direct participant engagement through targeted scenario injects and realistic crisis escalation. This option simulated the complete crisis lifecycle management from initial invocation through resolution, incorporating immediate hot debrief sessions to capture real-time insights.
• Comprehensive Reporting and Recommendations: Detailed assessment report providing evidence-based evaluation of IBS performance against established ITOLs, confidence level assessments supported by empirical evidence, and prioritised thematic recommendations for operational resilience enhancement.

The following insights were achieved as part of this project: 

• The scenario testing engagement revealed several critical actionable insights that will enhance the organisation's crisis management capabilities. Most significantly, the exercise demonstrated the need to establish continuous baseline monitoring processes that move beyond static, one-time assessments to implement ongoing evaluation of crisis management frameworks and business continuity protocols, creating a dynamic understanding of organisational readiness that evolves with changing threat landscapes. 

• The testing also highlighted gaps in confidence measurement, leading to the recommendation to develop evidence-based confidence metrics that systematically measure and track crisis response capabilities using empirical data rather than subjective assessments, providing more reliable indicators of actual preparedness levels. 

• Additionally, the scenario highlights potential misalignments between technical recovery strategies and business continuity approaches, emphasising the imperative to ensure these critical functions are developed collaboratively rather than in organisational silos, thereby preventing the coordination failures that could prove catastrophic during actual crisis situations.

With our support, numerous outcomes were achieved. Their operational resilience was validated as they gained concrete evidence of whether their critical business services could actually be maintained within acceptable timeframes during severe disruptions, moving beyond theoretical planning to proven capability across their syndicate operations.

The leadership teams also gained hands-on experience managing crisis scenarios in a controlled environment, building confidence and competence for real incidents while identifying decision-making gaps before they impacted syndicate performance. This helped them to improve their executive crisis readiness.

The assessment directly supported their regulatory obligations for operational resilience testing, particularly around Important Business Services and Impact Tolerances, helping demonstrate due diligence to a host of other regulatory bodies.

“The documentation sent through was very professional and seemed to be well thought out compared to some others we received. To provide an example, it was personalised rather than just a standard presentation. Having looked back at the initial communications, you set out clearly what we were looking for and included your understanding of (us) at that point.”

“With Operational Resilience, we could have just used another consultancy that may have been cheaper and provided us with enough to show willing, but, as mentioned previously, if we are going to do it, then we might as well get the most from it. Also, I would add that (the company) sees itself as a boutique (re)insurer and on the initial presentation, this was mentioned that Beyond Blue see themselves the same way, i.e. it is a differentiator between others in the market.

“We had an SME gap in our operational resilience capabilities and needed to work with an external party to support our scenario testing activities to meet regulator expectations.”

“BB offered an effective consulting service and solution. BB were efficient and thorough in responding to our proposal, requirements and adaptable in the appropriate ways before and after contract execution. Their entire team were easy to work with, challenged where required but also tailored the overview and feedback as needed for (us).”

“BB were self-managing and kept track of project plans and deliverables without chasing. Altogether, it’s been a positive experience and wouldn’t hesitate to work with BB again in the future”