ILS (Bermuda) Ltd, organisers of Bermuda Convergence 2017 today announced the event’s first keynote speaker, author, journalist and consultant Dan Gardner.

He co-authored his latest bestseller, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, where he makes the case that pundits are notoriously inaccurate at predicting the future, and that ordinary people make better prognostications with wide-ranging information gathering, thinking probabilistically, working in teams, keeping score, and being willing to admit error and change course.

More than 300 delegates are expected to attend this year’s event on October 18 and 19. Last year delegates came from 13 different countries attended the annual Bermuda Convergence event — a networking event covering the alternative reinsurance, insurance linked securities and collateralised reinsurance landscape

Superforecasting was chosen as one of the best books of 2015 by The Economist, Bloomberg, and Amazon.

He first explored these findings in his book, Future Babble, which was termed “required reading for journalists, politicians, academics, and anyone who listens to them”, by Harvard’s experimental psychologist, Steven Pinker. Mr Gardner is also well known for his book on risk perception, Risk: The Science of Fear, where he examined fear of what might happen in the future, and its influence on behaviour.

In 2016, Gardner became an adviser to the Prime Minister of Canada. Previously, he spent 17 years in newspaper journalism, where his work won every major award, including the National Newspaper Award, the Michener Award, and the Canadian Association of Journalists Award.

Gardner has lectured widely on forecasting and risk for governments and businesses such as Google and Siemens, insurance companies and venture capital firms. He holds degrees in law and history.

Greg Wojciechowski, CEO, Bermuda Stock Exchange, and ILS Bermuda chairman said Mr Gardner’s “research and work will be interesting and valuable to our event attendees who enjoy the topic of risk and science of prediction”.

Bermuda is the world leader for the issuance of ILS catastrophe bonds, collateralised reinsurance and alternative risk transfer. ILS issuance volume was the largest ever in the first quarter of 2017, reaching $27.19 billion outstanding showing record-breaking growth.

The Bermuda Stock Exchange listed 185 ILS vehicles with a market cap of $22.2 billion, over 80 per cent market share, during the same period. New risk capital is coming to market in record volume as investors continue to find ILS an attractive and diversifying asset class.

Tim Tetlow, partner and chief operating officer at Hudson Capital Management, a member of the ILS Bermuda Thought Leadership and Education Work Stream said: “Dan lectures around the world on forecasting, risk and decision-making. The ILS convergence space will be intrigued by his framework for the analysis of risk, complex information and prediction in real-world situations where traditional actuarial approaches might be less useful.

“As the ILS looks to new and innovative areas of risk, Dan’s insights can help in how we form models of what will happen in the future and how to think in terms of probabilities while also recognising that everything is uncertain.”