Bermuda Risk Summit Spotlights Wildfire Risk
The Bermuda Risk Summit 2026 will feature keynote and panel sessions on conflagration risk, examining how wildfire losses are reshaping global insurance and reinsurance markets.
A spokesperson said, “The Bermuda Business Development Agency [BDA] today announced two featured sessions at Bermuda Risk Summit 2026 focused on wildfire and conflagration risk, a rapidly intensifying peril that is challenging traditional underwriting models and testing the long-term insurability of exposed markets.
“The sessions form part of the Summit’s 2026 theme, Building What’s Next, and will take place on 11 March 2026, bringing together market leaders, catastrophe modellers, risk engineers and wildfire specialists to examine how the industry can respond collectively to rising loss severity and expanding exposures.
“Recent experience highlights the urgency. Severe weather and wildfire events continue to generate multi-billion-dollar insured losses across North America and beyond, with the most severe outcomes increasingly driven by conflagration dynamics, where fire spreads rapidly through the built environment and overwhelms traditional assumptions about wildfire behaviours. As insurers, reinsurers and capital providers reassess exposure, the need for coordinated mitigation, modelling and capital strategies has become central to maintaining insurability.
Featured sessions [11 March 2026]:
- Keynote | Beyond the Fireline: Conflagration Risk
- 12:30pm – 1:00pm
- David Torgerson, Chairman & Founder, Wildfire Defense Systems
- Panel | From Threat to Strategy: Building an Integrated Market Response for Wildfire Risk
- 1:00pm – 1:45pm
- Moderator: Adam Champion, Price Forbes Re
- Panelists: Anne Cope, Chief Engineer, IBHS; Loren Davis, Director of Risk and Catastrophe Analytics, Wildfire Defense Systems; David Torgerson, Executive Chairman & Founder, Wildfire Defense Systems
“The sessions will examine how underwriting discipline, capital deployment, mitigation services, data and modelling, and public-private collaboration can be integrated to reduce loss severity and improve market resilience. Particular focus will be placed on how conflagration risk is reshaping portfolio management and driving new expectations around prevention, defensible-space strategies, and community-level resilience.
BDA Head of Business Development, David Parker said, “Wildfire risk is no longer confined to the wildland interface. It is increasingly a capital and insurability issue, Bermuda plays a central role in connecting global risk with the capital and structures needed to absorb it. These sessions bring together the specialists working across modelling, mitigation and underwriting to examine what an integrated market response should look like, and how the industry can move from reacting to losses toward reducing them. For the BDA, gatherings like the Bermuda Risk Summit are also an opportunity to demonstrate why companies choose Bermuda, and why many continue to expand their presence here as new risks emerge.”
Wildfire Defense Systems Executive Chairman & Founder, David Torgerson said, “Conflagration events change the loss dynamics significantly, Addressing the risk requires coordination across the value chain — from prevention and engineering to analytics, underwriting and capital strategy. Bringing these perspectives together is essential to improving near-term outcomes.”
A spokesperson added, “Bermuda Risk Summit convenes global insurers, reinsurers, brokers, asset managers, regulators and institutional investors to examine the forces reshaping risk transfer and capital markets. As wildfire and secondary perils evolve, the Summit provides a platform for market participants to identify practical solutions that strengthen resilience and support sustainable insurance capacity.”
