Our inaugural conference in 2007 enabled our international audience to discover the wealth of insurance and reinsurance opportunities offered by the Qatari marketplace. Encouraged by a successful event, we extended the scope of MultaQa Qatar 2008 to showcase the potential of the GCC region as a whole and Qatar’s increasing weight in the regional marketplace.

As all of us know, the world has changed in the twelve months following our 2008 conference. The credit and financial crisis has taken its toll. North America, the Euro zone and Japan, the three main engines of the world economy, are in the midst of the most severe recession for decades. The GCC region, in general, has weathered the storm. Regional economies continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace. The economic diversification strategies pursued across the region start to pay off. Qatar and its financial services sector is a case in point: We now have over 100 international companies who have established operations in the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) and are open for business in Qatar and the wider GCC region.

This year’s conference programme has been designed to strike an appropriate balance between short-, medium- and long-term opportunities and challenges. We will obviously address the impact of the global crisis as no region can fully decouple from its onslaught. At the same time we must not lose sight of the long-term fundamentals which will continue to shape the regional insurance and reinsurance marketplace once the global economic turmoil has receded: Above-average economic growth, driven by energy prices which are likely to rebound in the near-term; massive government-sponsored infrastructure projects (which are being continued by most countries despite the current global recession) and the favourable demographic structure of the region – to name just a few of the many powerful drivers of sustainable growth.

Against this backdrop, MultaQa Qatar 2009 will provide you with authoritative and relevant information and intelligence from a variety of pre-eminent international and regional speakers. You will benefit from expert commentary on subjects ranging from the prospects for local companies in the era of globalization, the pivotal role of a strong local talent base, capital and investment challenges facing local insurers and changes to the region’s overall risk landscape. In addition, we will introduce Qatar’s latest and most ambitious initiative to build a world-class insurance and reinsurance hub: Qatar Insurance Services (QIS), a technology-based insurance system enabling integrated processing between insurance and reinsurance trading partners.

Fetooh Al Zayani,
Managing Director – Business Development (Insurance and Reinsurance)
Qatar Financial Centre Authority

Look at 2008

MultaQa Qatar 2008 attracted an audience of over 165 delegates representing 89 international and domestic companies from the insurance and reinsurance marketplace. This diverse and professional audience were presented with perspectives from established companies in Qatar and the region as well as keynote speeches from HE Yousef Kamal, Minister of Finance for the State of Qatar and Lord Levene the Chairman of Lloyd’s. But what makes this conference unique is our ability to create an environment ideally suited to networking. Delegates were given every opportunity to forge new relationships and discuss business potential be it during our successful Speed Networking arrangement, over a round of golf, during the Desert Experience or just in the tranquil surroundings of the Sharq Village and Spa – the chosen venue for the conference.