Contributed by Joanne Shaver, ICCIE Board Member and ACI Graduate
With the number of recent conference cancellations, it has occurred to me that once the business world returns to a sense of normalcy the in-person events that the captive industry thrives on will look a lot different.
It started with the CICA annual conference being cancelled in early March, then RIMS annual conference was cancelled and a few domicile associations followed suit. Special shout out to Dan Towle at CICA for promptly making the right decision on behalf of the health of CICA’s members and the captive industry as a whole.
VCIA recently announced their annual conference in August will be a virtual event, which should be very interesting and I look forward to hearing more about it in the coming weeks.
Many of the smaller captive association events are being postponed until later in the year. A full listing of the captive conferences that have been cancelled or rescheduled can be found on captive.com https://www.captive.com/resources/captive-insurance-calendar
Whether rescheduled or held virtually, one thing is certain: the conferences of the future will look a lot different than what they’ve been in the past. It will be interesting to see how this affects the captive service provider industry.
For many of us, the annual conferences are the mainstay of our networking opportunities. The conferences are where business happens and the rest of the year is spent following up and (hopefully) closing deals. Although networking can still be accomplished over the phone or through virtual platforms, the reality is that humans thrive on face to face interaction.
I’ve provided a link below to a whitepaper entitled “What Will Conferences Look Like Post COVID-19”, which was recently published by Boston University School of Hospitality Administration. Although not specific to the captive industry, it does provide some interesting perspectives that I believe many of us will find helpful.
https://www.bu.edu/bhr/2020/04/16/what-will-conferences-look-like-post-covid-19/
I hope to see many of you at an upcoming conference in the near future. Until then, stay safe!