Aon corporate division chairman David Martin has warned insurers to provide a greater scope of products to corporate clients or flounder.
Martin said research of corporations showed only 29% of their identified risks were currently covered, but the companies would cover 41% if they were able to.
The research also revealed only 17% of risks affecting products and services were covered, while corporations would prefer to cover 35%.
Other statistics showed that businesses named fire as their top risk in 1995, but by 2001 they were more concerned with intangibles, nominating loss of reputation as their top risk.
Martin said: "For a long time, the insurance industry has concentrated on the loss of assets. It's going to have to change to concern for anything
that causes loss of earnings."
He said corporate clients are also dissatisfied with the amount of "wriggle room" in the highly conditional indemnity agreements favoured by insurers.
Martin said they were also put off by the slow claims process and the fact insurers "spent years in court arguing about whether they were really liable".
However, insurers were actually drawing away from risk because they are under pressure from the stockmarket to provide less volatile results.
"Corporates don't associate the insurance industry with certain types of risk," Martin said. "We've got to remedy that or we're heading the way of
the dinosaurs."
