ERGO Experience Stories Part 9: Tandem - Gabriela Zeller und Peter Lutum
Questions for ERGO supervisor – Peter Lutum
Please describe your career journey and current role at ERGO.
I joined ERGO in 2010 as a Risk Manager at the Integrated Risk Management department. I was accountable for the risk identification and risk profile analysis of the ERGO domestic and international subsidiaries and for the ERGO Risk Limit & Trigger landscape. I led the Solvency II projects for group-wide Risk Strategy, ORSA and RSR / SFCR reporting. Afterwards I joined the inhouse consulting unit of ERGO. Some very interesting projects later, I got back to my roots and led the project of the new ERGO Group Reinsurance Strategy in 2017 / 2018.
During the project, I was asked to join the reinsurance department and I took over the responsibility for NatCat (natural catastrophes) and for other property reinsurance protection of ERGO. I also was accountable for the bundling of risks from the subsidiaries in Greece and in the Baltic States via reinsurance at a central risk carrier in Düsseldorf.
At the beginning of 2021, I was appointed as Head of Global Reinsurance at ERGO and, together with a strong team in Düsseldorf and abroad, I am happy to further improve our Reinsurance Strategy in Europe and extend our optimisation approach to the insurance operations of ERGO in Asia.
What is your academic and professional background before joining ERGO?
I joined the insurance sector in 1998 with an apprenticeship and studied reinsurance economics afterwards. I worked for the “Berufsbildungswerk der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft” and also for a reinsurance professor during my studies.
I joined Deutsche Rückversicherung as the assistant of the CEO, was accountable for the S&P Rating process and led various projects in the Controlling- and Risk Management department before joining ERGO.
What was / is your role within the cooperation between ERGO and TUM?
I was one of the contact persons for Gabi and the respective counterpart for discussions around natural catastrophes (NatCat) and their impact for ERGO.
Which experience at ERGO was most remarkable to you?
The observation that complex topics might get even more complex in big organizations. You have to watch out and try to bring the complexity down to a level appropriate for the respective stakeholder. This is true for big projects as well as for all line processes where you need to get a buy-in from other departments. My impression of the TUM students is that they are well prepared to quickly consume big doses of insurance-related complexity.
What was your favorite experience within the cooperation between ERGO and TUM?
I provided some initial guidance and insights regarding NatCat modelling and in particular how we are dealing with the results of our Internal Model / the different vendor modelling agencies like e.g. RMS and AIR. Afterwards, I simply asked for support and for driving some topics further.
The experience was awesome - it is a bit like surfing: At the beginning you have to invest some energy to get beyond the white-water zone and explain the (quite complicated) topics in reinsurance. But afterwards, the TUM students are able to perform on their own and you can also surf down the “knowledge waves” they are creating – it brings you forward with a lot of speed and fun.
What was the most interesting thing you have learned as an ERGO supervisor?
That one of the first steps of the assessment of correlating storm surge risks (“Sturmflut-Risiken”) in different harbors of the Northern Sea could be - from a mathematical perspective - to take a close look at the water levels measured at different stations on the river Isar.
Could you please give one piece of advice for students planning or starting their career in the insurance industry or in general?
1) Get in touch with the insurance sector early.
2) Build up an excellent network of colleagues and people within the industry.
3) Find the right balance between studies, parties and some extra work in the industry.
4) Don’t stop pushing your knowledge forward.
Questions for students – Gabriela Zeller
Please describe how you first got in touch with ERGO / ERGO Center of Excellence.
During my studies in the FIM (Finance and Information Management) Master program, my mentor Prof. Zagst told me about the cooperation and in particular the possibility to write a Master thesis on a current topic from the insurance industry with ERGO’s support. I took this opportunity to work on a scientific project and subsequently my thesis at the ERGO Center of Excellence on the application of self-exciting Hawkes processes in insurance jointly supervised by Prof. Zagst and Prof. Swishchuk from the University of Calgary. This project was supported by ERGO, who provided an extensive data set from the area of legal expenses insurance which I analyzed as part of my thesis.
What is your academic background?
After completing a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics at TUM in 2015, I studied abroad for two semesters (one in Mexico and one in Sweden), focusing on probability, statistics and financial mathematics. Afterwards, I joined the Class of 2016 in the Elite Network of Bavaria’s Master’s program “Finance and Information Management”. Within the program, I chose the “Quantitative Finance” track and decided to complete a scientific project and my Master thesis in the area of insurance.
What was / is your role within the cooperation between ERGO and TUM?
After finishing my Master thesis, I decided to stay at the ERGO Center of Excellence as a doctoral candidate and am currently (since autumn 2019) working on my dissertation on modelling and pricing cyber risk and the optimal design of cyber insurance contracts under the supervision of Prof. Scherer. As part of my doctoral studies, I spend around three months a year working at ERGO. For my first stay in Düsseldorf during the summer of 2020, I decided to join the Global Reinsurance department, which was a great opportunity to learn about reinsurance from a primary insurer’s point of view.
Which experience with ERGO was most remarkable to you?
During my stay in Düsseldorf, I found it remarkable how the whole team managed to make me feel immediately welcome and immersed in many different topics despite the Covid-19 restrictions. During my time working at the ERGO Center of Excellence, the most remarkable experience was getting to organize a series of events for TUM students in 2020 together with a dedicated team of ERGO colleagues. To give one example, due to the pandemic, we had to shift a planned dinner format into a virtual setting on short notice. Thanks to the dedication and creativity of our ERGO colleagues, we managed to provide “Dinner Boxes” to all participants, so the event could take place as a remote dinner format, with everyone enjoying a great meal together, from their own homes across Germany.
What do you like best about ERGO and why would you recommend ERGO as an employer?
In general, what I have continuously experienced throughout my time at ERGO Center of Excellence and my stay at ERGO in Düsseldorf is ERGO’s genuine interest in its employees and their individual career journey. Furthermore, ERGO has much more to offer than what many might perceive as classical insurance topics (which are of course interesting in their own right).
What I found remarkable during my stay in Düsseldorf was the competence and dedication of the entire team and their passion for the topics they work on. Furthermore, I am very grateful to my supervisors for providing me the opportunity to work on many different topics within Global Reinsurance and learn a huge amount in a short time span.
What is the most interesting thing you have learned from your ERGO supervisor?
I was very glad to get the opportunity to learn a number of things from all team members on a daily basis during my stay – what I found most interesting was the huge amount of information that has to be collected and structured for the property group cover submission as well as how to read meteorological weather maps to analyze storms and floods, and – on a side note – what hitting a sandbank at considerable speed while surfing looks like from a first-person perspective (thanks to GoPro).
How will your time working with ERGO influence your future plans?
As before starting my master thesis, I had gathered no practical experience in the insurance sector, my project stays provide the perfect opportunity to get to know different aspects of working in insurance. These experiences will certainly be very valuable when deciding on a career path after completing my doctoral studies. My stay at Global Reinsurance has already given me the opportunity to learn about one fascinating department at ERGO, so who knows if I will be back there for good in a few years’ time :-).
Wenn du mehr über die ERGO-Botschafter/innen und ihre persönlichen Experience Stories erfahren möchtest, schreib uns einfach an experience.m13.ma(at)tum.de oder triff uns bei einem zukünftigen Event. Für individuelle Charaktere bieten ERGO und TUM individuelle Möglichkeiten – finde auch du deine Story und werde Teil des Teams!