Staff Writer
Patrick Kusikwenyu has taken over as president of the Association of Insurers and Reinsurers of Developing Countries (AIRDC) for the 2026–2028 term, pledging to strengthen cooperation among insurers and reinsurers across developing markets while expanding training, benchmarking and technology sharing.
Kusikwenyu succeeds Chai Sophonpanich, chairman of Bangkok Insurance Public Company Limited in Thailand.
Accepting the presidency at the 24th AIRDC Annual Conference in Harare, Kusikwenyu said his tenure would focus on transforming the way the association operates and ensuring that its membership across Africa, Latin America, Asia and other developing regions becomes more actively engaged.
He said AIRDC needed to address historically low participation at its conferences despite representing insurance markets across a broad geographical area.
“I think this is something that we must work to change,” Kusikwenyu said.
He said discussions at the Harare conference had demonstrated the value of bringing insurance professionals from different markets together, providing lessons that could be translated into practical programmes across the association.
Kusikwenyu identified benchmarking as one of the key areas he intends to promote during his two-year term, saying members should have greater opportunities to learn from one another and share approaches to common challenges facing the insurance industry.
Training will also be central to his agenda, with Kusikwenyu proposing closer links between AIRDC’s training programmes and national insurance associations in member countries.
“I think you’ll see in the next couple of months us reaching out to your associations, to your insurance institutions, to try and find a space in which we can train our people from the various countries,” he said.
The incoming president also highlighted technology and artificial intelligence as areas requiring greater collaboration among insurers in developing markets.
With AI rapidly reshaping the insurance industry, Kusikwenyu said AIRDC should use its platform to enable members to exchange ideas on how technology can help build stronger and more sustainable institutions.
He said the association would also seek greater engagement with technology providers, with future conferences providing opportunities for IT companies from different markets to showcase their systems and solutions.
Such collaboration, he said, could help insurers access technology at lower costs while creating opportunities for products and systems developed in one market to be adopted elsewhere.
“We’ll probably be able to get these systems much cheaper, and we’ll also be able to export the products that we’ve developed,” Kusikwenyu said.
He argued that insurance markets in developing countries often face similar challenges, making cooperation and knowledge-sharing critical to strengthening the sector and improving its capacity to respond to emerging risks.
Kusikwenyu concluded by framing his presidency around a broader understanding of insurance resilience, arguing that the strength of individual insurers can no longer be considered in isolation from the wider environment in which they operate.
“Insurance resilience is no longer simply about the strength of an individual insurance company. It is about the resilience of an entire ecosystem in which insurance operates,” he said.
“Let’s make AIRDC that ecosystem.”
