The Hiscox Energy team has taken on their first risk engineers, working across traditional upstream energy risks, power generation, and the fast-growing world of renewables. Sharing what it means to be a risk engineer within Hiscox and the insurance industry, Denise Dass-Hewitt, Upstream Energy Risk Engineer, and Martin Joseph, Power Generation Engineer, who both joined Hiscox in 2024, talk about their roles, why the insurance industry needs engineers, and how clients will benefit from more engineering expertise.
What are your career backgrounds?
Denise Dass-Hewitt: “From university I started my career as a Petroleum Engineer (PE), gaining global experience over a 38-year period in different upstream energy companies. As I was beginning to think about retirement, a former PE colleague contacted me to ask if I wanted to use my PE knowledge to help upstream energy insurance underwriters better understand the risks. After eight years of working in insurance, I did retire but with both an active mind and body (and a timely intervention from a Hiscox director, who was a former colleague) I returned to the sector in March 2024."
Martin Joseph: “After studying for an Advanced Mechanical Engineering master's degree with a focus on renewable energy, I worked in industry for a number of businesses involved in the energy sector as a Mechanical Engineer. This included working for an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of turbines used in power generation. More recently, I worked for a start-up business developing battery packs for the transport industry. So, my career background contains a mix of renewables, power generation and midstream and downstream energy.”
What do your roles at Hiscox involve?
Martin Joseph: “My role is to review the risk submissions we get for renewable projects from a technical and engineering perspective, which means considering a whole mix of renewable energy technologies from solar, wind, hydrogen, carbon capture, offshore and onshore wind, and helping underwriters further develop their understanding of the engineering risk.”
Denise Dass-Hewitt: “As an engineer I get involved with the risks submitted by brokers associated with traditional upstream energy risks and more recently carbon capture and storage as the world begins to transition to net-zero. But while Martin and I provide engineering advice on each risk, we do not advise the underwriters to write or not write a risk. That's a clear distinction between us and the underwriter.”
What was the appeal of moving into insurance?
Martin Joseph: “I believe the energy transition to net-zero is critical and the insurance industry has a key role to play on this journey by helping to de-risk renewable energy projects as far as possible. Being part of this really appeals to me. Also, the exposure to a wide range of renewable energy technologies, which this role offers, and helping our underwriters to understand the changing nature of these energy risks really attracted me as I enjoy developing and sharing knowledge.”
Denise Dass-Hewitt: “For me, it took quite some time to understand how I could help insurers. I didn't know anything about insurance apart from the usual suite of personal insurance products. But when I got started, I realised that the energy underwriters (both at my previous role and here at Hiscox) are very sharp, already asking pertinent questions to brokers, but now I could help them with the finer engineering details. I could see the value I was adding, enabling our underwriters to better understand the risks our clients are facing and underwrite these risks with more confidence. The better we understand the technical details of a risk, the more we can tailor the insurance policy to meet client needs. It also enables Hiscox to write risks that those carriers without engineers might not be able to get comfortable with, which is really important – particularly as we see such fast technological advancement.”
What do you perceive are the client benefits from an insurer having risk engineers on site?
Denise Dass-Hewitt: “We are not here to just give risk advice to our underwriters, but also to help with risk management for clients to reduce accidents. For example, we can bring lessons learnt from other risks (obviously without breaking client confidentiality) to another client facing a similar issue. Our breadth and depth of experience means we bring additional scrutiny to each risk, but I think clients can also benefit from our insight too and we’re more than happy to get directly involved in broker and client meetings.”
As engineers, how do you stay fresh in terms of knowledge given you’re no longer working directly within the energy industry?
Martin Joseph: “There are a lot of different forums for risk engineers in the energy sector where the discussion is around the technical aspects of losses in the energy industry. They are also a great place to discuss best practice in the industry. However, technology is always changing and developing and staying on top of that knowledge through self-study/research is just part of an engineer’s career no matter who you are working for.”
