143. How mother nature helps and hinders insurance

“Insurance is a get rich slow kind of an industry” says Nick Martin, manager of Polar Capital Global Insurance fund. But while my parents may have hidden from the door-to-door insurance salesman of the 1980s for fear of having to listen to an hour-long monologue, the industry is anything but boring for investors. Nick talks us through mother nature and the emergence of secondary perils, how coral reefs and mangroves are helping insurers and why inflation is more of threat for future pharmaceutical liabilities than our car insurance.