How will the City compete in a more unpredictable world? That question frames Lady Mayor Dame Susan Langley's visit to Monaco this week for the Rendez-Vous de Septembre, the insurance industry's great annual gathering, where professionals from some 90 countries convene not around a casino table or a grid start-line, but around the harder business of managing risk in an increasingly unstable world. The event, held in Monte Carlo since 1957, traditionally opens the global reinsurance calendar, setting the tone for negotiations that conclude at renewals season in January.

To outsiders, Monaco means the Monte Carlo Casino, superyachts and Formula One. To those in the insurance industry, it means something else entirely: a barometer of how the world's risk-takers are reading the geopolitical weather.

It is also, Dame Susan writes for City AM, the perfect place to engage with the international insurance industry and showcase the London Market and all the things it does so well. The London Market – centred on institutions such as Lloyd's of London, which has underwritten risk for more than three centuries – is a global hub for specialty and commercial insurance and reinsurance, handling risks that are often too large or too complex for domestic markets elsewhere. "Indeed, when the world gets risky, London is where it comes." She has previously written about those unique strengths for City AM, as well as the fantastic opportunities a career in the sector can offer.

Throughout her time as Lady Mayor, opportunities have been sought to promote them, both at home through events such as the inaugural Global Risk Summit in May, and during the course of many international visits. Later this week, she will travel to Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore, with the ASEAN trip having a strong insurance focus. There is keen interest in exploring how the London Market's capacity and expertise can assist in underwriting the risks attached to projects such as the ASEAN Power Grid and other infrastructure initiatives. The ASEAN Power Grid is a long-planned regional initiative to interconnect the power networks of Southeast Asian nations, a type of cross-border infrastructure whose financing and construction risks typically require large-scale, internationally pooled insurance capacity of the kind the London Market specialises in providing.

In a volatile world full of shared, increasingly complex challenges – from conflict in Europe and the Middle East and contested trade routes to the rapid development of technology – it is vital to look outwards, Dame Susan argues: to strengthen existing friendships, build new partnerships, and relentlessly seek opportunities to collaborate. "History has taught us time and again that progress is built on cooperation – that resilience is forged through partnership." She believes the City's success in the years ahead will not be determined by the challenges it faces, but by how it responds to them: whether it turns inward or reaches outward, whether it acts alone or together.

That ethos of openness lies at the heart of her international engagements. It is why all Lord and Lady Mayors spend around 100 days of the year abroad as ambassadors for the UK's financial and professional services sector. But looking out – looking at things afresh and building new relationships – also means doing so at home, on the City's own doorstep.

Connecting capital to opportunity

As she said when taking over the role last November, every part of her mayoralty would be driven by a single motivation: to connect capital to opportunity, both human and financial. That means ensuring more people have access to the opportunities the City provides, including those from less advantaged backgrounds. It means making the workplace more inclusive, including for women, who remain underrepresented across both business and public life.

This week, Mansion House is hosting a "Women Who Lead" panel with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, the Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Sue Carr, and the Cabinet Secretary, Dame Antonia Romero, to inspire the next generation of female leaders.

It also involves identifying new ways of working – convening investors, government and industry – to ensure the City remains agile to the problems of the present and the future, utilising the full power and expertise of the world-leading financial and professional services (FPS) sector. On Wednesday, the latest Scale Up Showcase event will be held, bringing together the best of British defence and dual-use innovations with the investors and customers who can help them scale.

With a little over two months – some 60-odd days – left as Lady Mayor, this will remain her mission: to look outwards. Outwards to new partnerships, outwards to new markets, and outwards to new talent.

Dame Susan Langley is Lady Mayor of the City of London.