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Insurance is a maze. Don’t get lost. Mark Geoghegan asks directions from all the top people in the Global Insurance and Reinsurance Industry
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Today’s guest can boast a 40-year career in the reinsurance business and now leads a global reinsurer with around $3bn in gross written premium and approximately 250 employees.
Dieter Winkel is President of Liberty Mutual Re and this podcast is very timely, given its positioning just ahead of the key 1.1 reinsurance renewal season.
Dieter is everything you want in a reinsurer: experienced, probably unshockable and very measured and consistent, as well as being easy to talk to.
In this Episode we cover all the major issues affecting the global reinsurance market, from the general state of the market cycle, and trends in global specialty, property and casualty and retro all the way through cyber to the burgeoning world of parametrics and the best applications of AI in reinsurance.
This a very enjoyable interview with a consummate reinsurance professional, who has lived through multiple market cycles and is an excellent communicator and great company to boot.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. This week they are advertising their successful TINtech London Market event, which will be happening on 4th February 2025.
Tuesday Dec 10, 2024
Tuesday Dec 10, 2024
Today’s podcast is a first for The Voice of Insurance. It’s the first time I’ve done an outside broadcast.
And the reason is a special one. David Howden started what was then Howden Pangbourne just over thirty years ago with two others and, famously, a dog, in a tiny office on St Dunstan’s Hill in London.
Now that business is around six thousand three hundred times bigger in terms of staff numbers and infinitely larger in terms of revenue and has become a major global insurance and reinsurance operator working all over the world.
I had been trying to get David back on the show for a while as it had already been 2 years since his last appearance alongside Rod Fox after the acquisition of reinsurance broker TigerRisk.
The message came back that he might be tempted to do it as long as we could do something different.
So this is indeed completely different.
David and I met up at St Dunstan’s one morning two weeks ago and went for a walk around the Insurance district of London we both know so well, taking in the sights, but also all of Howden’s five London head offices past and present along the way.
Inevitably we get a bit of a history lesson and hear lots of insightful stories and some fun anecdotes from along the amazing Howden entrepreneurial journey of the last three decades amid a fast-changing London and international insurance market.
But far more importantly we also discuss the core issues affecting the present and the future of that market and how Howden is positioning itself within it.
Howden Re, Dual and the MGA boom, the big question over whether Howden might enter US retail broking, ongoing broking consolidation, big capital questions around what structures make the most sense as Howden continues to scale, the firm’s latest 30/30 strategic plan and other key decisions facing the Howden Group now and over the decades to come all get comprehensively dealt with.
There’s nothing like a good walk for opening up a better quality of conversation.
David’s passion and enthusiasm are fizzling through every second of this fun and all-encompassing discussion.
If you want to know how David got this far do listen on, you’ll learn an awful lot.
But I think a better reason to carry on listening will be to hear where he is heading in the next few years and how he plans to get there.
By the time we close our conversation in Dave’s Wine Bar at the foot of Howden’s current HQ, you’ll be much wiser, but probably needing a sit down and a cup of coffee as much as I was.
NOTES:
If this has piqued your interest, there are some handy highlights of the Howden story here:
https://www.howdengroupholdings.com/about-us/our-story
The other broking firms that get the most mentions in this Episode are Spear Gulland, acquired by Howden in 1997 and major Spanish intermediary Gil y Carvajal, bought by Aon in 1998.
I worked at Gil y Carvajal’s London office from 1992-95 and again 1997-98, hence my extra inside knowledge of St Dunstan's.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. This week they are advertising their successful TINtech London Market event, which will be happening on 4th February 2025.
Friday Dec 06, 2024
Friday Dec 06, 2024
Today’s episode is the latest in a series of podcasts that are all about highlighting the technology companies that are part of AdvantageGo’s ecosystem.
And this one is really special because it involves the boss of one of the ecosystem’s most essential core partners.
Aidan O’Neill is the CEO of DOCOsoft, which is the firm on whose systems around half of the London Market’s claims are handled.
Aidan has been involved with the London Market for around 25 years and since the advent of the electronic claims file in 2008 DOCOsoft has built a leading market position around claims software.
Aidan and Ian are both people who anyone who has been part of the London Market community is likely to know or have met at least once.
And because of that in many ways this podcast is a personal embodiment of the ecosystem that Ian and AdvantageGo are trying to build – and this itself is a reflection of the wider ecosystem of collaborating and competing entities that make up the broader London Market that it serves.
Ian and Aidan have been collaborating for many years and get on extremely well.
So in this fun episode we get an overview of DOCOsoft and all the latest news on the ecosystem, but we also get the benefit of all of Ian and Aidan’s collective wisdom looking beyond the upcoming reforms of Blueprint 2 and into a world of straight-through processing and a market where the true benefits of new technologies such as AI are going to be reaped.
Greater productivity, better client service and outcomes and a much stronger flow of business into London are some of the prizes that Ian and Aidan can see just over the horizon.
It's inspiring stuff and the next half an hour is going to rattle by.
Tuesday Dec 03, 2024
Tuesday Dec 03, 2024
This podcast features an interview with Dawn Miller, Lloyd's Chief Commercial Officer and CEO of Lloyd's Americas. Miller discusses her career, her dual roles at Lloyd's, and her strategies for modernising the market's image and operations. She highlights initiatives to improve transparency, streamline processes, and attract new business.
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The oldest showbiz adage of them all is to always leave them wanting more and this week’s episode does exactly that
That’s because it is a very short, sharp blast of energy from start to finish.
Dawn Miller is Lloyd’s Chief Commercial Officer and has just taken over as its Americas CEO. Not many people have the energy to take on two huge roles, but it’s clear after this meeting that Dawn isn’t like many people.
Half an hour with Dawn is worth at least an hour with someone else.
So hang on as Dawn defines the essence of what her Lloyd’s roles are and she tells us her goals and strategies for presenting the best side of the marketplace to the world today.
I think Dawn is the culture change at Lloyd’s of the last few years personified.
Listening to someone as pro-active, positive and passionate as her, you already know the market has become the polar opposite of the venerable but slight stuffy institution it might once have been.
Indeed Dawn explains that probably her biggest job is debunking all the accumulated myths and baggage that have arisen around the perceived complexity, time and expense of dealing with Lloyd’s over its long history.
This one packs a huge amount into a relatively small space. You won’t have time to catch your breath.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. This week they are advertising their successful TINtech London Market event, which will be happening on 4th February 2025.
Tuesday Nov 26, 2024
Tuesday Nov 26, 2024
Today’s episode is a real treat. With all Voice of Insurance podcasts the aim is to be able to get to a level of comfort and ease with a guest so that what we end up hearing is as close you can get to listening in on a lively conversation between two good insurance market friends in a bar.
This week I think we managed it and that’s down to my guest, Nick Line, the Chief Underwriting Officer of Markel International.
Nick has had a fascinating career, almost all of it at Markel and one of the forerunner companies that it acquired to make its entry into the London Market in the late 1990s.
Nick has been through markets hard and soft as well as reserving cycles plump with redundancy followed by equal and opposite inverse periods of insufficiency and strengthening.
You could say he has seen most things – and he also seen those phenomena through different lenses as he started his career as an actuary and only more recently took a more public-facing role.
Nick’s story is Markel International’s story too- as well as that of the evolving London and wider international insurance markets over the last 30 years.
As the market has become more technically sophisticated and reserving, pricing, capital and risk have to be measured and controlled, it has become perfectly logical that a CUO might not necessarily be someone who has written a risk in anger themselves
We cover quite a bit of history but it is the forward-looking parts of this podcast that are the most rewarding because Nick combines all the technical smarts one would expect from an actuary with the communication skills of the best CEOs.
His is a vision of the tech-and-data-empowered underwriter and global insurance market of the future, but one where the magic always still happens at the behest of a human insurance professional.
Markel International has grown quickly in the hard market of the last few years and this podcast is a record of a business that has found a groove and is firing on all cylinders.
We made this recording in Markel’s London office only aided by coffee, tea and water with no beer or wine anywhere to be seen.
But by the end it’s almost as if the champagne were flowing as tongues and jaws were loosened and expansive ideas were unleashed on the world.
This makes for a fun listen that is brimming with smart observations and interesting takes from Nick.
I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. This week they are advertising their successful TINtech London Market event, which will be happening on 4th February 2025.
But before then Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector, takes place on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Get 20% off using the code ‘voice’ when you sign up Here
Friday Nov 22, 2024
Friday Nov 22, 2024
In today’s Episode we are getting to grips with all the key questions surrounding the hugely important issue of exposure management and modelling in our sector.
Models are a core part of our business, but as we have come to rely more and more heavily on their output, many fundamental questions arise.
For instance, how much of a worry should it be that the market is dominated by two very large players?
Or do enough C-suite executives really understand how models work or know the right questions to ask of their exposure management teams?
And are we any closer to finding efficient cross-industry ways of making sure that the exposure data upon which our modelling is based is accurate and easily transferable in digital form?
To assist me in this task are three people with vast experience in attacking these questions from all angles.
Emma Watkins is Head of Exposure Management & Aggregation at Lloyd's and as such has oversight of one of the largest combined books of business anywhere in the world.
Rupert Atkin is an underwriting veteran who has had a long and illustrious career. The Former CEO of Lloyd’s Underwriter Talbot is also a former Deputy Chair of Lloyd’s and Chair of the Lloyd’s Market Association.
Rupert currently serves on multiple boards, including as Chairman of Lloyd’s businesses Ark Managing Agency and Carbon Underwriting as well as a Director at brokers AmWins Group and Alwen Hough Johnson.
Finally Dickie Whitaker is the founder and CEO of the not-for-profit open source modelling platform, the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework.
Dickie can trace his long career back to the foundation of cat modelling firm Eqecat and also spent over a decade in senior roles at reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter. Most recently he founded the open peer-reviewed Journal of Catastrophe Risk and Resilience.
It’s clear our panel is well qualified for the job, but what I enjoyed most about this gathering was the ease and good humour with which my guests took on the subjects in hand.
This could have been a dry and academic affair, but it was absolutely nothing like that. The conversation is lively and positively buzzes with energy.
NOTES:
Oasis LMF has produced a fascinating report Navigating the Storm that makes a great accompaniment to this podcast.
Download it Here
Tuesday Nov 19, 2024
Tuesday Nov 19, 2024
Today’s guest is going to be giving us a masterclass in a really specialist and relatively new class of business that most of us will have heard about over the last 15-20 years, but few will have had the chance to get to know intimately.
The class is Warranty and Indemnity (W&I) which is also often known as Reps and Warranties, and the expert who is going to guide us through this fascinating world is James Dodd, founder of recently-launched specialist MGA, Devonshire Underwriting.
James is an exceptional entrepreneur and this podcast will answer all the questions you had about this exciting class of business but were too scared to ask, as well as leave you in no doubt of the scale of ambition of James and his growing team.
We’ll learn the ins and outs of this specialist line as well as the state of its finely-balanced markets.
James is a great communicator and a patient teacher and if you give me the next half an hour, I promise you’ll learn an awful lot, as well as have some fun on the way.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. They are advertising their new London-based event, Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector.
It’s on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Get 20% off using the code ‘voice’ when you sign up Here
Tuesday Nov 12, 2024
Tuesday Nov 12, 2024
Today’s guest is quite out of the ordinary for the Voice of Insurance.
Normally guests on the podcast can recount multi-decade careers in insurance from the time they fell into the industry up to the present day.
Today’s guest is extraordinary because he is someone of vast experience in his field but who has only just been recruited into the insurance industry.
John Mason is the CEO of London Market electronic placing provider PPL and can boast a glittering career running the core systems and platforms that support hugely important global financial markets in other financial sectors outside of insurance.
From this encounter I can tell you straight away that I think that we have a lot more to learn from John than he does from us.
But thankfully for us John is not the sort of outsider who has come to lecture us on how to drag our antiquated trading systems into line with markets that fully digitised decades ago.
John is an experienced leader and the type of communicator who understands that a market that syndicates bespoke structured insurance coverage across the globe is bound to throw up many unique complications and challenges
He gets the tone just right – he is here to do an important job and he has a clear vision of how to go about it, but he is very conscious of the need to meet us where we are and show how tech is going to make the way we already work way more efficient and higher added value, rather than try and force us to completely change the way we do business.
And that’s where this extraordinary podcast adds its value. John is easily the most eloquent leader running a core insurance technology platform I have ever interviewed. He knows where the pitfalls lie and has the experience to know how to execute large, complicated, transformational projects.
He hasn’t been with us long, but the ideas we discuss in the time that follows are highly impressive and are set to transform frontline brokers’ and underwriters’ day-to-day relationship with the technology they use to carry out their jobs.
They could unleash a wave of productivity and creativity that would completely re-set the market’s relationship with itself and with the rest of the world.
It’s extraordinary stuff – but as I said at the beginning, John is very much out of the ordinary.
LINKS:
We mention a video that PPL has produced outlining the vision behind its recently-announced partnership with Microsoft. I highly recommend a view: https://vimeo.com/1017109828
Tuesday Nov 05, 2024
Tuesday Nov 05, 2024
Today’s guest is a longstanding executive with an incredibly strong resumé who is running one of the legacy sector’s most respected outfits.
Bill O’Farrell is CEO of Premia Holdings and as such has an excellent overview of this rapidly maturing segment of the market.
In the podcast Bill and I look at the state of the legacy market and how it is likely to be interacting with the live market going forward.
At a time when the live market is undergoing one of its periodic crises of confidence in US casualty, it is particularly valuable to talk to someone who has spent much of his career making a living out of taking on and managing long-tail liabilities of all complexions.
We also examine how the structure of the legacy market is evolving towards a partnership model in which repeat transactions with live market counterparties are much more likely than in the past.
We also look at innovation and the best applications for AI within legacy as well as the prospects for an important role for the sector to play in the nascent casualty ILS market.
Bill’s not only incredibly experienced and knowledgeable, but he’s also very easy-going and really enjoyable company and the next half an hour will pass by very quickly.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. They are advertising their new London-based event, Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector.
It’s on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Get 20% off using the code ‘voice’ when you sign up Here
Friday Nov 01, 2024
Friday Nov 01, 2024
Todays’ guest is a senior treaty underwriting executive with such a strong technical and systems background that he ended up joining a firm dedicated to solving his sector’s problems.
Bevis Tetlow is CEO of Imaginera, a business that produces specialist IT systems specifically designed for the big-ticket end of the market.
Imaginera is also a highly specialist IT consultant to the industry.
Bevis is one of us and speaks our language and that’s what makes this exchange so accessible and valuable.
Here we dissect the world of workbenches and how state-of-the-art systems designed for reinsurers and other high-level specialist underwriters should look like in 2024.
We also get Bevis’s views on where the next developments in technology are likely to take the high-end underwriting and broking businesses of the future.
Bevis is great company and this podcast packs an awful lot of accumulated wisdom into the next half an hour or so.
I learnt a lot and so I think will you
NOTES:
Bevis mentions a Toby and a Michelle. These are Toby and Michelle Crawford, the original founders of Imaginera back in 2013.
An abbreviation slipped through. A PAS (sometimes spelt out P.A.S. and sometimes pronounced ‘pazz’) is a Policy Administration System.
LINKS:
https://www.imaginera.co.uk/
Tuesday Oct 29, 2024
Tuesday Oct 29, 2024
With a career spanning more than 30 years, today’s guest is a senior executive who has the London insurance market well and truly in his blood.
John Fowle has changed employer since his last appearance on this podcast just under three years ago and with a year under his belt as CEO of Atrium Underwriters, now seemed the perfect time to get him back on the show.
Atrium is a Lloyd’s blue-chip performer, respected in the market for its agility and underwriting skill across the cycle, and ability to punch well above its weight.
As Lloyd’s and Atrium are experiencing some of the best market conditions and underwriting results in their histories, this was a meeting with an executive at a business with great prospects in a market that is openly supportive to growth and innovation.
With the world effectively Atrium’s oyster, there are many doors and options currently open to this carrier.
With so many potential choices available, the conversation that follows reveals a lot about John and Atrium’s singular view of the insurance world – a view that has stood them both in good stead over the last 30 years.
We talk about the prospects for pricing and continued business flow into the London Market, a new-found maturity over collaboration, smart distribution and innovation and get specific updates on some of the classes in which Atrium is recognised as a leader.
John is a straight-talking guest who doesn’t duck any of my more sensitive questions, but for me it’s his deep understanding of how the market fits together and what it does best, coupled with a senior manager’s knowledge of how to get the best out of high-performing underwriters that really shines through this Episode.
Listen on and I think you’ll see what I mean.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. They are advertising their new London-based event, Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector.
It’s on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Get 20% off using the code ‘voice’ when you sign up Here
Tuesday Oct 22, 2024
Tuesday Oct 22, 2024
As CEO of Ryan Specialty Tim Turner has arguably some of the best visibility of the global insurance market and its stress points of anyone in the industry.
The business that Tim has helped to build with founder Pat Ryan is a broad, deep, complex and highly efficient insurance distribution machine, that picks up and serves wherever local markets are unable or unwilling to provide the insurance solutions that its retail brokers’ clients around the world need.
The firm works with over 20,000 brokers of all sizes and handles more than $25 billion dollars in annual premiums.
Ryan Specialty has also been a major consolidator in its segment, executing many large and complex deals on both sides of the Atlantic.
In this podcast I was able to quiz Tim on all the trends in the market and he was really open and forthcoming in all his answers.
So if you’d like to know where the major friction points and opportunities are, whether the boom in E&S submissions will continue and wonder where ongoing retail broking consolidation and the continuing wave of MGA formations are likely to be leading then listen on.
You won’t be disappointed.
But more importantly you’ll be spending time with one of the sector’s most successful, experienced and dynamic executives and learning how he thinks about the insurance world and how he intends to make the most of all the many commercial opportunities it is currently affording a business like Ryan Specialty.
Tim’s also great company and his drive and enthusiasm for our sector is undiminished and I’ll wager a listen will put a renewed spring in your step.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. They are advertising their new London-based event, Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector.
It’s on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Get 20% off using the code ‘voice’ when you sign up Here
Tuesday Oct 15, 2024
Tuesday Oct 15, 2024
This is a great episode with someone whose job encompasses education, engagement and innovation and who has found real purpose and great satisfaction in her current role.
Rosie Denée is best known for running the highly successful Lloyd’s Lab innovation hub, but her full job title is in fact Head of Innovation, Commercial Education and Engagement at Lloyd’s.
In this podcast we get to the heart of how to foment innovation in the global specialist insurance and reinsurance market and learn about the characteristics of the top insurtech companies that give them the best chance of success and perhaps more importantly, what traits are most closely associated with failure.
We also get a sneak peek at what the next wave of new Insurtech companies are likely to be offering the incumbent market in the coming years.
Rosie is the sort of personal who lights up when she starts talking about her job and so I can guarantee that this will be an educational, innovative and highly engaging listen.
NOTES:
IoT means the Internet of Things – the sea of interconnected devices that make up our world today.
LINKS
Rosie mentioned Lloyd’s Lab alumnae:
Gaia https://gaiafamily.com/en-gb and
ClearConnect Solutions https://clearconnectsolutions.com/
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. They are advertising their new London-based event, Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector.
It’s on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Get 20% off using the code ‘voice’ when you sign up Here
Friday Oct 11, 2024
Friday Oct 11, 2024
Today’s a really enjoyable episode because I am talking to someone of vast insurance market experience who is getting a shot at putting that deep knowledge and acquired wisdom into really useful practice
Greg Massey has had an insurance career spanning four decades that culminated as Head of Programs at Zurich North America.
On his retirement in 2022 he became an adviser to VIPR to help the company with its US expansion plans.
This is a great match because in this role Greg is able bring his experience to bear to introduce US Delegated authority and programme management industry peers to the products and solutions that VIPR has been providing to that same community in the London Market for almost 15 years.
Greg is a great professional and this podcast is a masterclass on best practice in the application of technology for solving core operational problems and generating a genuine data-driven edge in this burgeoning market segment.
Greg is also excellent company and is incredibly open and generous with his insights.
Half an hour with him will fly by and give you a large number of practical ideas you can apply to your own business.
Tuesday Oct 08, 2024
Tuesday Oct 08, 2024
Welcome to the third instalment of the podcast where I use the annual Monte Carlo RendezVous to gauge the outlook ahead of the key 1.1 Reinsurance renewals.
This year, a lot had changed in the preceding 12 months. 2023 results had been almost universally excellent for all reinsurers and capital had returned to very healthy levels.
Colour and confidence were visibly returning to the market.
Smiles and receptive ears were in far greater supply than a year previously and the grim mood of two years ago had been almost completely forgotten.
The only flies in the ointment were continued emergence of poor back year performance in some US casualty classes and a hesitancy among investors who still seemed more ready to punish any bad news, than reward the good.
Whatever had been black and white two years ago was becoming progressively greyer and choice and options over what - and how and in what shape or size reinsurance could be bought - were beginning to open up for cedants.
In short this is a market of nuances and one where experienced traders are going to be given an opportunity to shine.
So join me as I root them out from either side of the underwriting desk and find out what’s going on.
My promise to you is that if you weren’t lucky enough to be down on the Cote D’Azur in early September, listening to this podcast will be the next best thing to having been there in person, in the rooms, suites, cafés, restaurants and lobbies with me as I interrogate a large number of key industry personnel.
Give me the next hour and I’ll give you the State of (Re)insurance.
NOTES:
GL = General Liability
LINKS:
We thank our sponsor Stephens Rickard:
www.stephensrickard.com
Tuesday Oct 01, 2024
Tuesday Oct 01, 2024
Todays’ Episode is a fast-moving, high-intensity blast from start to finish.
That’s mostly because of the people I’m talking to, but also due to the circumstances under which we are doing the talking.
First the people.
Richard Brindle is well known to anyone in our business as one of the most dynamic underwriters in the market.
And anyone following the Fidelis story will know that now the business has split into the Fidelis Partnership and the Fidelis Insurance Group, Richard has freed up time to be even more dynamic.
It’s perhaps understandable that Richard Coulson, The Fidelis Partnership’s CEO of Insurance & Deputy Group Chief Underwriting Officer, doesn’t yet have the same public profile as his namesake, but on this performance it won’t take long for that to start building.
Secondly the venue was Monaco at the Monte Carlo RendezVous. The RendezVous always heightens the intensity of any interaction.
People come there ready to communicate against the clock and that cut-to-the-chase feel very much comes through in this encounter.
As a result this podcast covers everything it should – the state of global markets and where Fidelis is positioning itself to make the most of the opportunities those markets are throwing up, the Fidelis Partnership’s entrance to Lloyd’s and the two Richard’s views on all the major issues of the day.
Listening back this is a really enjoyable Episode, packed with singular, original and sometimes surprising insights.
NOTES
The Fidelis Partnership wanted to add the following points to our discussion about Intellectual Property (IP) insurance:
Like others Fidelis exited the IP market earlier this year;
Arguably IP is a great example of the bravery of innovation with measured downside and then pulling back quickly as soon as the warning alarms sounded;
As a relatively small and well-managed book, there was very little impact on their overall exceptional long-term bespoke underwriting performance.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. They are advertising their new London-based event, Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector.
It’s on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Find out more and Sign up Here
Thursday Sep 26, 2024
Thursday Sep 26, 2024
Beazley is a carrier that is synonymous with expertise in the Cyber insurance line and today we are going to get a masterclass in the Cyber threat and how to deal with it from all angles.
We’re going to look at how that cyber threat is evolving, and how Cyber criminals are modifying their methods of attack in the face of an increasingly sophisticated line of defence from companies and Government agencies around the world.
We’ll look at the new threats coming in the age of Artificial Intelligence and - in a world where the CrowdStrike event has reminded us that not all threats necessarily need to be malicious to have a global impact – more mundane problems
A decade ago cyber insurers may have partnered with third party service providers, such as threat monitors and security consultants.
These days the best cyber insurers are bringing those services in-house and offering a holistic offering to their customers, one where everyone’s interests are fully aligned to the best outcomes for all concerned.
In this podcast we will see how this is fundamentally changing the traditional relationship between insurers and their customers.
You don’t have to be a Cyber expert to benefit from a listen to this podcast – indeed, as the Cyber world encroaches more and more on every aspect of our daily lives and companies become aware that Cyber threats directly affect the core of their businesses in all respects, being an avowed techie is less and less important.
These days the best CEOs and CFOs are increasingly aware that a Cyber attack could be an existential threat to their company and that this is clearly not a matter to be left to the IT department to handle alone.
To help us cover this subject from all possible angles, I have been lucky enough to interview four diverse experts from within the wider Beazley business:
They are: Fran Donoso, Chief Technology Officer of Beazley Security, Sydonie Williams, Beazley’s Cyber & Tech Focus Group Leader for the rest of the world, Raf Sanchez – Head of Cyber Services at Beazley Security and Cyber Security Consultant, Alex Creswell.
NOTES:
I highly recommend you download Beazley’s latest Cyber Tech Risk Report.
It’s called Spotlight On Cyber & Technology Risk 2024 - Resilience in a Game-changing environment and it makes a perfect accompaniment to this podcast.
Tuesday Sep 24, 2024
Tuesday Sep 24, 2024
Today’s guest is in an enviable position – this is because he works for one of the most mature and trusted brands in the global insurance food chain, but is leading the underwriting at a segment of that business that is only just five years old and is still building out and growing fast.
Greg Hohman is the Chief Underwriting Officer of Munich Re Specialty Insurance and has a very special vantage point from which to survey the US market.
This conversation is full of valuable pointers on where the US P&C market is heading.
In it we dissect the Excess and surplus lines (E&S) boom, whether parts of the market are peaking and how much of the shift into this segment is cyclical and how much is permanent.
We also delve deep into the shift in distribution with the continued rise of MGAs and hybrid carriers and examine the question of how Artificial Intelligence might best be harnessed in the insurance value chain.
But this is also a very well-rounded conversation in which Greg explains how he got into insurance and shares his best career advice.
Greg is smart, straightforward and really enjoyable company and time spent with him flies by quickly.
So over the next thirty-five minutes you’ll learn an awful lot, but I think you’ll also make a very knowledgeable new friend in the industry.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. They are advertising their new London-based event, Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector.
It’s on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Find out more and Sign up Here
Tuesday Sep 17, 2024
Tuesday Sep 17, 2024
Today’s guest is a master of the aviation class of business, but is also a well-known and respected market figure across classes, holding key positions in market committees and international insurance trade bodies and non-insurance organisations alike.
Bruce Carman has been a leading aviation and war underwriter since the late 1980s and after over 30 years at the heart of the Lloyd’s market, started his own specialist MGA, Hive Underwriters in 2017.
That business has grown rapidly and has begun to mature and scale and so now seems an excellent time to get Bruce on the show.
The aviation market is in a fascinating position post the Russian invasion of Ukraine and part of our talk will be an incredibly useful listen for any generalist who might feel that aviation is sometimes a specialism too far for them.
But that wouldn’t be doing justice to Bruce and this discussion.
Listening back, what this podcast is really about is examining the art of becoming a good and highly focused underwriter and insurance entrepreneur.
Bruce is incredibly good company and is very generous with his time and insights.
My overriding impression is of someone having the time of their life.
Bruce is someone who has been given the opportunity to start from scratch and be fast-paced and nimble in applying the best practices and technology available today to a lifetime of frontline high-performing underwriting experience.
NOTES
Abbreviations:
EASA = the European Union Aviation Safety Agency
WAIG and BAIG = Respectively the Westminster and British Aviation Insurance Groups – early UK aviation pools. BAIG is a forerunner of today’s Global Aerospace.
Appointed Rep = Appointed Representative. A UK term where a younger firm gains regulatory (usually FCA) authorisation via an arrangement with a fully-regulated firm.
LINKS:
Bruce mentioned an Allianz aviation report, which is a highly complementary read to accompany this podcast:
Aviation risk, claims and insurance outlook 2024 | Allianz Commercial
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
We also thank new audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. They are advertising their new London-based event, Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector.
It’s on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Find out more and Sign up Here
Friday Sep 06, 2024
Friday Sep 06, 2024
I would have to spend some time checking the numbers, but today’s guest is the Chief Underwriting Officer who oversees arguably the largest amount of Gross written premium in the world.
That’s because Rachel Turk is really a Chief, Chief Underwriting Officer who oversees forty to fifty of her peers in the $70 billion dollar Lloyd’s market.
Whatever the final numbers, her job gives her one of the best vantage points anywhere in global insurance, so learning what she thinks is incredibly useful.
Also given the authority she wields, it’s incredibly important to know, why she’s thinking what she’s thinking and how those thoughts might be turned into actions in the Lloyd’s market.
Given the pivotal importance of the job and the huge diversity within the Lloyd’s market, being a strong communicator and being relatively easy to read must be highly desirable qualities in a candidate for a role such as this.
Happily Rachel is a brilliantly clear communicator – what you see is what you get.
Sometimes interviewing people in very senior, very sensitive jobs like this I have to grapple with cryptic answers or political-style evasion techniques where the difficult questions seem to be there to be avoided.
There’s absolutely none of that in the interview that follows. Rachel is a blast of new energy with a refreshingly down-to-earth and approachable personality.
In this podcast we rattle through a tour of where Rachel sees the Lloyd’s portfolio and global insurance and reinsurance markets today and more importantly in what directions she is looking to nudge and steer the market in the future.
A listen will give you a really clear idea on where Rachel stands on overall performance, casualty rate adequacy, reinsurance at Lloyd’s, captives, innovation, the opportunities for profitable growth and even AI.
You’ll also come away with a pretty clear idea of what she would be like to deal with.
It became clear to me that she’s an underwriter’s underwriter. Having sat on the other side of the table she really understands the commercial pressures that underwriters face in the real world.
But because she has sat in those shoes she can recognise all the ways that even the smartest underwriters might start to repeat the mistakes of the past.
I really enjoyed this. I think this is one of the best Episodes of the year so far and can highly recommend a listen.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Sep 03, 2024
Tuesday Sep 03, 2024
Today’s interviewee is making his fourth appearance on the podcast, which I think makes him my most interviewed guest.
But as he is the CEO of Hannover Re, one of the world’s largest and most consistently outperforming reinsurers, I’d love to be able to have Jean-Jacques Henchoz on the show even more regularly.
That's because very few underwriters have such a global view of the market and the timing is impeccable. A week before the festival of reinsurance that is the Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous is the perfect time to catch up with someone like Jean-Jacques.
This time we have an encyclopaedic conversation that somehow manages to encompass the state of the treaty and facultative reinsurance market, Life reinsurance, AI, carbon capture and climate change as well as lessons learned from the recent Baltimore Bridge and CrowdStrike loss events
Jean-Jacques is always unassuming but disarming in his directness. In many ways he is the epitome of the adage that in life one should speak softly, but carry a big stick.
Happily, with the market in such a strong position, it looks like the stick won’t be needed and I find Jean-Jacques in excellent spirits and looking to continue growth and further deepen his partnership with clients.
With the reinsurance market at a far more nuanced stage than it has been for the last couple of years, there is a lot of insight packed into the next forty minutes and I can highly recommend a listen.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Aug 27, 2024
Tuesday Aug 27, 2024
It's the ultimate job of a Broker to make insurance and reinsurance deals happen.
You can’t make things happen if you’re too shy to talk to anyone, or not good at listening.
Once you have listened you then need to be empathetic and understand the nuances and intentions of the parties to a transaction.
You also need to be able to make a point eloquently and sometimes forcefully.
All the above explains why brokers tend to make such good podcast guests!
And today, as our thoughts start to turn towards reinsurance, the autumn conference season and the 1.1 renewals that eventually follow, it’s fitting that we have a prominent reinsurance broker on the show.
Tim Ronda the CEO of Howden Re is the consummate reinsurance broker and Howden Re is the largest and probably most aggressive challenger reinsurance broker of the pack.
However with annual revenues approaching $600mn I wonder if the word Challenger really makes much sense any more and we might soon be simply describing Howden Re as an additional global reinsurance broker, to the three that now exist?
This conversation is a great primer for the state of the reinsurance market with a broker who now has the critical mass to get good visibility on large swathes of it.
It’s also a chance to have an update on the most ambitious reinsurance broking build-out of recent times and check in with where this now maturing project is heading.
Tim’s a font of knowledge and really good fun to spend time with.
I really enjoyed this podcast and I’m sure you will too.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Aug 13, 2024
Tuesday Aug 13, 2024
I’m really pleased today because after almost four years of trying I have finally managed to get someone from the Arch Capital group of companies onto the show.
Arch’s appetite to make the most of market opportunity and react quickly to a lack of the same has led to long-term outperformance that speaks for itself.
That is perhaps just as well in a business that is really quite media-shy for such a substantial and well-regarded public company.
Numbers only tell a small part of the story and that’s why I’m delighted to welcome Hugh Sturgess, President and CEO of Arch Insurance International to the show.
Hugh’s division is a global operation that encompasses everything that Arch does in insurance outside of North America. It stretches from the London market to Bermuda and from the UK regions to Continental Europe and Australia.
The business has grown many multiples in the harder market of the last four years and now writes over two billion dollars in premium and employs a thousand people.
Hugh has been with Arch for 19 years, so is steeped in the Arch culture and way of doing things. As such this podcast isn’t just a guide to the opportunities Arch is seeing in the Specialty insurance markets in London and beyond.
It definitely is that – but I think if you listen carefully you can learn a few of the little things that add up to make a business like this outperform over long periods in many different market situations.
And Arch may be a little media-shy, but Hugh certainly isn’t – this is as fun and lively a conversation as I have had with anyone in a long time.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Jul 23, 2024
Tuesday Jul 23, 2024
Today’s guest is someone who combines well-above-average intelligence with an approachability and a willingness to study and cover risks that many of his peers can’t or won’t consider.
Ryan Mather is CEO of Ariel Re, a business that has positioned itself at the cutting edge of exciting emerging classes such as Green energy and Cyber reinsurance, while the same time maintaining an edge in more traditional lines such as property cat – all within the Lloyd’s platform.
All this makes him something a breath of fresh air.
He is also frank, open and direct but disarmingly charming.
These are ingredients that make for an excellent podcast.
In this Episode we get to grips with the state of the market from Ariel’s point of view.
Nothing’s off the menu and here we discuss topics as diverse as solar energy, Artificial intelligence, the new Lloyd’s and how investors currently view balance-sheet businesses.
Ryan’s one of those people who make you feel a little bit cleverer every time you meet them.
Listen on and see what rubs off onto you.
NOTES:
An abbreviation slipped through. HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) is the UK tax authority.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Jul 16, 2024
Tuesday Jul 16, 2024
Some podcast interviews are really fulfilling to be involved with. Sometimes it’s the rapport I have with the guest and sometimes it’s the subject matter and the insights that I find the most satisfying.
Today’s podcast is a rare combination because it’s both of the above. Jeff Radke Co-Founder and CEO at Accelerant Holdings, is clearly on top of the world in this interview.
His business is absolutely flying; it’s now employing around 375 people and is connecting an amazing 190 MGAs with 12 insurers and 66 reinsurers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The organisation wrote just over $1.7billion of premium in 2023. This is about four times the size the business was when we last spoke just over three years ago.
Jeff is great fun to be around, but it’s the vision and understanding of how the whole structure of large parts of the specialty insurance sector is changing that is what makes this such a good listen.
Back in the old days growth at this speed might have been frowned upon, or at least viewed with a certain amount of scepticism.
Not now – these days technological change means that the ultimate capital providers can drill right down into as much detail of the risks their capital is supporting as they want and they can asses the quality of their book in almost real time.
Jeff has had a career that has given him an incredibly detailed view of the insurance value chain and his vision for how the new ways the constituent parts of that chain are sharing out the value that they create in much more meritocratic ways is fascinating.
So If you have been spending time wondering why the MGA boom seems to have continued unabated even with a hard insurance market and a major reset in reinsurance, this is easily the most eloquent and enjoyable explanation you’ll hear on the subject.
You’ll also learn of Accelerant’s plans around captives, his thoughts on Lloyd’s as well as underwriting classes as diverse as fish drying and credit
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Jul 09, 2024
Tuesday Jul 09, 2024
Today’s guest runs a business that this year is set to quadruple in size since the first time he was on the show just over two years ago.
What’s more it is looking to more than double again in the medium term.
Tanguy Touffut CEO and co-founder of Descartes Underwriting is one of the indispensable leaders in the burgeoning parametric insurance sector.
Descartes is probably the best-funded and certainly most ambitious of a cohort of peers to emerge in the last 5 years on the back of the insurtech boom.
It has made a large strategic bet on the sector, building a global network of offices and now employing over 200, with more offices and hires still likely to come.
Now that the sector is beginning to mature and the field of start-ups begins to thin out and parametric products are joining the day-to-day toolkit of major brokers and commercial risk managers, it was great to catch up.
Much has changed since we last spoke, not least a huge shift in the state of the reinsurance market and the emergence of artificial intelligence into the global psyche, so we had an awful lot to talk about.
In an industry where conservatism and scepticism are not only endemic but often valued character traits, Tanguy has a clear vision of how the right parametric solutions applied in the right places are going to transform insurance for the better, in consistency and transparency of pricing and coverage as well as in speed of claims handling and payment.
My job for large parts of this podcast was to play devil’s advocate and challenge Tanguy on this new modus operandi of insurance and whether it is a genuine disruptive challenge to the commercial insurance sector as a whole or something of a passing fashion.
Tanguy came though extremely convincingly.
He may be a visionary, but Tanguy is also a realist who knows that if this relatively new method of risk transfer is to succeed long-term, it must have a genuine technical edge over traditional indemnity insurance in terms of its understanding and pricing of risk – hence Descartes’ huge investment in scientific and technological talent.
This is someone who has thought deeply about the whole insurance value chain and knows where it might be improved and that’s what makes this a fascinating conversation.
Listen on for a grand tour of an exciting and fast-moving new insurance sector with one of its principal architects.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Jul 02, 2024
Tuesday Jul 02, 2024
I have the best job in the world.
That is, it’s the best job for someone like me, who really likes talking to people and finding out what they are doing and thinking – but also as a bi-product finding out what they are really like.
The reason I am saying this is because today’s episode was so much fun to make that it didn’t feel like a standard day at the office.
I have had Warren Downey (left) and Lee Anderson (right) of London-headquartered intermediary Specialist Risk Group (SRG) on the show before and really enjoyed their company, good humour and the openness and ease with which could discuss their strategy and business philosophy, but the interview you are about to hear is exceptional.
This is because rarely do I interview two senior executives who finish each other’s sentences so regularly and enjoy each other’s company so much.
The trigger for our podcast was a change of investors that has brought Blue Chip players Warburg Pincus and Temasek into the fold at a reported valuation of over £1 billion pounds, so perhaps that is why the conversation was so animated.
Whatever the reason, what follows is a very enjoyable romp outlining the strategy and culture of an incredibly successful broking duo.
What is SRG going to do with its new investment? The answers are all in here.
And that’s because of the two people in the room with me.
A minute ago I said I have the best job in the world for me – and it seems obvious to me that these two would say exactly the same about their jobs.
NOTES:
Warren is the first to speak.
The football team owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney is Wrexham.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Jun 25, 2024
Tuesday Jun 25, 2024
Today’s guest is a leader in one of the most innovative and interesting businesses in the market.
He was last on the show as part of a duo but is now here in his own right.
This should all make much more sense when I tell you that I am talking about Dan Burrows, the Group CEO of Fidelis Insurance Group.
Since we last met Fidelis has successfully split into the balance sheet insurer that Dan runs and the MGA the Fidelis Partnership led by Richard Brindle, in a move to a hybrid structure that is the first of its kind.
Fidelis Insurance Group has also floated as a public company, completed a secondary capital raise and is to back the launch of a Fidelis Partnership syndicate at Lloyd’s.
Many of the above events are once-in-a-lifetime occurrences for most executives, but Dan moves quickly and the person I spoke to for this interview gave the impression of already being settled into his new roles and doubtless exploring his business’s next moves.
A listen back to this podcast has confirmed that time spent with Dan is enormously productive.
We cover a huge amount of ground, from the state of the market all the way through to the best application of Artificial Intelligence in the insurance value chain.
But I think one of the most valuable aspects of this encounter is that we get to hear Dan speaking clearly for himself and the interests of his shareholders.
He does so incredibly frankly and candidly. His views are never ambiguous.
So if you would like to spend some very productive time with a key player in one of the most successful underwriting organisations of its generation, please listen on.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Jun 18, 2024
Tuesday Jun 18, 2024
Today’s podcast is all about the insurance of political risk and violence and we are going to come at this subject from all angles.
This episode is intended to be an all-round masterclass for anyone with an interest in these fascinating and fast-growing specialist lines of business.
Is the world a riskier place and are risks going to remain insurable? And where is most of the new demand of the coming decades going to be coming from? All is examined in detail.
Much has been made of the exceptional number of elections taking place in global democracies in 2024 as another possible source of political complications and conflict.
Africa has also been highlighted as a potentially huge new source of demand, driven by the global transition to net zero carbon emissions and this goal’s need for the rare earth metals that are to be found in abundance in many of its Southern and Eastern States.
But it’s no secret that many of Africa’s most mineral-rich nations with the largest development potential are also places where political stability can be in short supply.
For this reason, I talk to Lara Wolfe, Senior Sub-Saharan Africa Risk Analyst at risk consultancy BMI, which is part of the Fitch Group. (Pictured Top)
This market sounds like the ideal territory for brave underwriters to be operating in and this is where the expertise of Roddy Barnett (Pictured bottom), Head of Political Risks and Trade Credit at Beazley is invaluable.
Finally, with the help of Beazley’s Head of Political Risk and Violence Claims, Alex Hill, (pictured middle) we’ll learn how the political risk product actually works on the.
I am very pleased with how this first thematic documentary-style podcast has turned out – I do hope you enjoy it and find it useful.
NOTES:
Here’s the link to the Navigating political risk in an era of heightened global tensions report: https://www.beazley.com/en-US/news-and-events/geopolitical-risk-snapshot-2024
There’s a great summary, but I highly recommend downloading and reading it in its entirety.
Tuesday Jun 18, 2024
Tuesday Jun 18, 2024
Today’s Podcast is all about innovation and today’s guest has been responsible for doing more of it than most.
James Slaughter is Chief Underwriting Officer at Apollo Group, a Lloyd’s business that has been behind collaborations and new product launches galore in recent times.
Be it exploring semi-automatic underwriting and the application of artificial intelligence, the development of its own ibott syndicate, helping launch a parametric syndicate, or other specialist start-ups focusing on risks as diverse as Cyber, Drones, employee parental benefits or unlocking new business from Africa, Apollo has become one of the go-to market enablers for innovation in the London Market in recent times.
James is always incredibly direct as an interviewee – and what you see is what you get – I find he’s exactly the same person whether the microphones are switched on or off.
And that’s why this Episode is such a treat, James always says what he thinks - and it’s clear he thinks a lot more than most.
Listen on and you’ll learn a lot about what is coming down the track, how some of the vanguard technologies are best being exploited and which of the newest developments at the insurance cutting edge James is most excited about.
It’s breathless stuff – I had a lot of fun recording this one and I think you’ll enjoy a listen.
NOTES:
Abbreviations:
UNL – Ultimate Net Loss. In this context it is shorthand for traditional contract-of-indemnity insurance versus a parametric insurance structure.
GUA – the General Underwriters Agreement, which is a leading underwriters agreement designed to govern and streamline how amendments to subscription market placements can be carried out, often allowing a leader or leaders to bind on behalf of following markets.
ICX and TCX – Lloyd’s class of business codes for innovation and the energy transition respectively.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Jun 11, 2024
Tuesday Jun 11, 2024
Today’s guest carries out an incredibly important role representing the whole London Market in the UK’s corridors of power.
That means looking out for a market that wrote over $100bn in core gross written premium and controlled just under $160bn in all in 2022, increasing its global market share to over 8 per cent.
That also means representing a market that now employs some 60,000 people and produces two percent of UK GDP and eight-and-a-half percent of London’s GDP.
Caroline Wagstaff, CEO of the London Market Group, was born to do a job like this.
She’s passionate and very difficult to say no to, but she’s also a great communicator and is very good at reading a room and understanding a collective mood.
The London Market Group (or the LMG) allows Lloyd’s, Liiba, the IUA and the LMA to speak with one voice on broad London Market-related topics and in this Episode we dissect the LMG’s latest London Matters Report and catch up with what is now top of the LMG’s busy agenda.
The Report is an essential companion to this episode and there will be a link to it in the Notes – I highly recommend a read – it isn’t long and is packed full of very useful facts about the London market’s place in the global risk ecosystem, as a well as its direction of travel.
Caroline is on excellent form in this discussion and the podcast is crackling with energy.
I for one am extremely glad that we have been able to get someone of her calibre to represent us as an industry.
London has been doing relatively well of late but listening back to this recording it’s clear that there is zero complacency at the LMG.
It’s clear that Caroline is not going to rest until the UK government and regulators are working harder to make it do even better.
NOTES:
The Latest London Matters report can be found here: https://lmg.london/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/London-Matters-2024-Data-Pack.pdf
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
Tuesday Jun 04, 2024
Tuesday Jun 04, 2024
Today’s guest is in charge of a team of around 400, writing a book approaching $3 billion in gross written premium in the largest wholesale insurance market in the world
I have had many CEOs on the show who run significantly smaller operations.
And that’s what gives this podcast so much weight.
Wendy Houser is Chief Wholesale Officer of Markel Specialty and is one of a select group of people with day-to-day visibility of the booming US Excess and Surplus lines (E and S) market.
So today we are going to go into quite a lot of detail about the state of this huge and dynamic segment.
An unprecedented level of business flow and rate rises has produced something of a golden age for E&S and we’ll be trying answer how much longer this state of affairs can continue.
Wendy is great company, so along the way we’ll be getting to know a remarkable and charismatic insurance leader with a huge amount of knowledge and insight, who isn’t afraid of making difficult decisions and certainly doesn’t duck any of my more probing questions.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
Tuesday May 28, 2024
Tuesday May 28, 2024
I can’t believe it’s been three-and-a-half years since I had Alex Maloney on the podcast for a full episode to himself.
We’ve had brief catch-ups at Monte Carlo and when we bump into each other in the London Market, but I haven’t had time with Alex properly devoted to understanding what he and the Lancashire Group is thinking.
A huge amount has happened since we last spoke, not least Lancashire’s entry into the Casualty Treaty arena and its decision to open up a new operation in the US Excess & Surplus lines market.
Alex is a great guest because he is one of the most direct and straight-talking people I have had on the show.
What you see is what you get.
And what we get here is a tour of global insurance and reinsurance market opportunities and what Lancashire is doing to make the most of them, with a minimum of fuss.
We also get a distillation of Lancashire’s strategy of managing selective growth while trying to preserve a small company mindset and culture and at the same time pitching something slightly different to industry talent.
It’s all substance and no spin.
Listen on and I promise you’ll learn an awful lot in a very short amount of time. You’ll also get to meet probably the straightest shooter running a public company in our sector.
NOTES:
I let the abbreviation TIV sneak through. It is a property term and stands for Total Insured Values.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday May 21, 2024
Tuesday May 21, 2024
Today’s episode is a masterclass with two leaders in the North American professional liability market.
Often on this show we talk about the big picture in very broad brushstrokes, but today is refreshing because we are getting into specific and specialist detail about some of the most broad-reaching and dynamic classes of business anywhere in the world.
Danielle Librizzi, Head of Professional Liability, and Chris Cooper, Head of Media Liability, at QBE North America have a lifetime of market experience between them and this is a lively discussion.
Casualty is under the spotlight the world over, but nowhere more so than in North America, so these two senior underwriters are right at the frontline in the battle to keep on top of new perils and trends in the world’s fastest-moving and highest stakes market.
Here I ask what Danielle makes of casualty rate adequacy and I ask Chris how the pandemic, the trend to digital platforms and the writers’ strike have affected the media liability risk landscape.
How is QBE’s professional liability division responding to the call for the globalisation of QBE’s offering and far great collaboration between departments?
And how is QBE utilizing Artificial Intelligence on the ground in its own underwriting processes and, perhaps more importantly, how does Chris view it as an emerging media liability and potentially systemic general E&O peril?
I got all the answers I was looking for and if you stay tuned so will you.
Danielle and Chris are excellent company and this will be a very rewarding listen for anyone wanting to get a better perspective on the North American professional liability market
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
Friday May 17, 2024
Friday May 17, 2024
Today’s podcast is one of the most eclectic and far-reaching I have produced since founding the Voice of Insurance over four years ago.
And that is entirely down to today’s guests. Ian Summers Global Business Leader of AdvantageGo (pictured top) is a well-known figure to anyone who has worked in the Global Insurance Market and has a full career of pioneering market modernisation behind him from within the market as Global Information Officer at Aon and serving the market at major Software companies.
And if were possible, Bill Pieroni (pictured bottom) has had an even more all-encompassing career to date than Ian. Starting outside the industry at top consultancies, a senior role at State Farm and five years as Global Chief Operating Officer at Marsh followed.
For the last eight years Bill has headed up global insurance data standards body ACORD.
But if you thought that meant our chat would be limited to global data standards, you’d be completely wrong
At their core what Bill and Ian do is provide the tech and the utilities to help insurance get on and do what it does best.
Bill and Ian have only been so successful so far because they understand the industry inside and out and that means this podcast is far more wide-reaching than you would imagine.
For instance, you wouldn’t expect tech experts to commission a historical study on the efficacy of M&A for the insurance industry, would you? But these two have, principally because they are so embedded into the sector that their level of understanding matches most of the most seasoned Executives and analysts.
So get ready for a real feast.
The winners and losers in insurance M&A, really-detailed insights into the best applications for Artificial Intelligence, the real reason why insurance is so hard to transform and the prospects for the London Market if its latest digital reforms are successful are all to come.
And the style of delivery may surprise you. If Ian is a strong and forthright character, Bill is almost off the charts in the energy and passion that he brings to this discussion.
I had a real blast and learnt a huge amount. Listen on and so will you.
NOTES:
The M&A study we discuss can be downloaded here. I highly recommend a read – it’s fascinating stuff (and could potentially save you $billions!)
Tuesday May 14, 2024
Tuesday May 14, 2024
Top-tier MGA CFC Underwriting has undergone some very well-publicised leadership changes in the last few months and Andy Holmes is the business’s newly-appointed CEO, so I’m delighted to have him on the show as this week’s guest.
Andy’s been part of this organisation since very early in its remarkable growth story and was previously its Chief Underwriting Officer, so he knows the business inside and out.
Nothing was off the table in this discussion, so we started where we needed to, but soon got swept away in a whirlwind of M&A, new product launches and insights into the world of cyber, embedded insurance, parametric covers and, of course, Artificial Intelligence.
Andy is incredibly engaging and easy to talk to and in this podcast he reveals a huge amount of accumulated insurance business wisdom and fills in many details about CFC’s original and highly successful insurance philosophy.
Listening back to this interview it’s clear that although CFC might have had big changes at the top, it’s definitely not slowing down and its body corporate and innovative culture remain as effective and worth studying as ever.
NOTES:
We mention Ciaran Martin, who is former CEO of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and chairs the Technical Committee of the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC).
The CEO of the CMC is William Mayes.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
Tuesday Apr 30, 2024
Tuesday Apr 30, 2024
Today’s guest is well on the way to cracking a problem that has been vexing the market for thirty years and something I have been writing about specifically for the last twenty.
We all know that the process of syndication of risk in the London and other international insurance and reinsurance markets is full of inefficiencies and ripe for reform.
But just because a problem has been around for a long time and has been well documented, it doesn’t make finding and implementing a solution any easier.
I have lost count of the number of insurance and reinsurance exchanges I have seen launch and then wither and die over the last two decades.
Gilbert Harrap, the CEO of InsurX is someone who is setting out to change all of this.
Many exchanges failed either because they were founded by people with little understanding of complex insurance or they alienated their potential users, particularly the brokers, who often rightly or wrongly perceived them as a threat to their businesses.
InsurX is different because Gilbert is someone with market experience who is focusing on building a utility that could help both underwriters and brokers increase volumes and improve margins.
This is a fascinating conversation with someone running a business that has already gained significant traction in two classes of business and is looking to expand across the board.
Gilbert is one of us and I think that’s a big part of why InsurX has been well received. He is laser-focused on helping brokers serve customers better while allowing underwriters to diversify in smart new cost-effective ways.
He doesn’t want to be an underwriter or a broker – he just wants to be the one connecting them using intelligent new methods that add value to both parties.
I really enjoyed my time with Gilbert and left feeling that InsurX might be one of the first exchanges to make it in the complex syndicated risk space.
I also ended this conversation feeling much more optimistic about the future of the London Market and its prospects of increasing its global share of high-quality insurance business.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Friday Apr 19, 2024
Friday Apr 19, 2024
Today’s guest is VIPR’s Client Services Director, David Butler.
On this show I speak to lots of CEOs and that means my guests are sometimes quite far removed from the day-to-day solving of problems for clients.
David’s job is to be as close to the client as possible, finding out what their real problems are and therefore what they really need.
It’s then his job to make sure that what VIPR are providing those customers with is exactly what’s required – and more importantly that customers have all the training and support to make sure they can get the maximum benefit out of a product and can adapt and reconfigure it effectively as their business develops.
All this means is that he probably has his finger closer on the pulse of what is worrying carriers in the market than almost anyone around.
So as the market digitises and looks to analyse the new data pools that it is collecting and apply new technologies like AI at many different points in the value chain, it is people like David who are going to be doing all the heavy lifting.
David is a technology specialist with just under 30 years’ experience and his insights into how to make the most of all the exciting new tech at our disposal or just coming onstream, is hugely valuable.
He’s also a really friendly person who has spent much of that long career explaining complicated ideas in ways that are really easy to understand and that’s why I can heartily recommend a listen today.
NOTES
I promised to look up what the common computing term BUS stands for:
BUS is an acronym for Binary Unit System. These are used to used to transfer data around a network (a bit like the way a real-life bus moves people about).
Tuesday Apr 16, 2024
Tuesday Apr 16, 2024
Today’s guest has quickly shown himself to be one of the industry’s most accomplished leaders.
When he took over at SiriusPoint just over 18 months ago he gave the business a clear but tough turnaround plan that he executed quickly.
Now just coming through the other side of a remarkable change in fortunes, he is brimming with confidence and ambition to move the business he runs further up the performance percentiles.
Scott is a very strong communicator and the next forty minutes are packed with very specific ideas, strategies and clear direction.
With someone like Scott, you get the impression that you will always know where you stand and exactly what he expects of you, but the very detailed nature of his responses shows that he also listens extremely carefully to what questions he is asked.
SiriusPoint is very much marching to his beat and he is a very engaging, disarming and direct podcast guest.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Apr 09, 2024
Tuesday Apr 09, 2024
Today’s podcast is a real tour de force with the founding CEO of a maturing Lloyd’s market business that is starting to come into its own in its eleventh year of trading.
Fresh from a takeover by blue-chip private equity investor CVC and now boasting a sub-90 percent combined ratio and $450mn in capacity for 2024, Duncan Dale, CEO of Dale Underwriting Partners, is full of confidence and is excited about the opportunities that the Market is currently throwing up for his firm.
In many ways Dale Underwriting partners is a microcosm of the Lloyd’s of the last ten years. The market of the twenty-teens was a difficult one in which to start up, but patience and persistence have finally started to pay off.
The investment by CVC last year was rightly reported as a re-affirmation, not just of Duncan’s business, but of the continued attractiveness of the Lloyd’s platform itself.
This discussion is fun and is a wonderful dissection of the state of the market.
It’s also an underwriting masterclass with a canny trader sharing his long experience and deep understanding of the US casualty insurance and reinsurance market, the discussion and debate of which has been hogging the headlines for most of the last 24 months.
Listen on and hear about the opportunities that are exciting Duncan now that he has grown the underwriting platform and attracted the capital to make the most of them.
NOTES:
When Tom Bolt was at Lloyd’s his job title was Director of Performance Management.
LINKS
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Apr 02, 2024
Tuesday Apr 02, 2024
How do you get big, globally diversified insurance companies to innovate? It’s something that we all know is way easier said than done.
That’s what today’s podcast is really all about.
Today I’m joined by two senior executives who are working together to implement change, improve efficiency and do new things at global insurer QBE.
Global Head of Cyber Serene Davis has been tasked with creating a global offering for cyber at QBE, where up to now development has been patchy, with different strategies playing out in various markets across the world.
And CEO of QBE Ventures James Orchard runs a small team whose job it is to assist senior executives like Serene in realising their vision through the partnerships and strategic investments that will build up the tech providers that will help them achieve their goals.
It’s a fascinating conversation and one that embodies QBE’s relatively new CEO Andrew Horton’s plan to imbue a culture of innovation across the group globally.
Indeed Mr Horton may not be on the show himself in this Episode, but his presence never seems to be far from the surface.
It’s clear from this lively chat that if you want to instil change and a culture of innovation you have to lead from the top and you have to resource it and be strong enough to accept that there will be many twists and turns on the road to eventual success.
Listen for yourself – for anyone who is grappling with the challenge of keeping a large insurance business up to speed and relevant, without throwing out the parts of its culture that have already got it to where it is, this will be a valuable listen.
NOTES
I let the abbreviation KPI through. It stands for Key Performance Indicator.
LINKS
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
Tuesday Mar 26, 2024
Tuesday Mar 26, 2024
Today we’re doing something completely different. We are going to try to look into the future.
In this Episode none of the people we are going to talk to are senior insurance leaders. But they might be the insurance leaders of the future.
We in insurance know that we’re not likely to be at the top of young people's wish lists when it comes to a future career.
But it’s only recently, as we have focused more on talent gaps, that we have started to do something about remedying this problem.
That’s where today’s episode comes in.
There is a wonderful talent accelerator called Startup Sherpas that goes out and engages with young people via paid work experience cohorts that are funded by industry. These projects, which take a hundred young people each, are called Supersquads.
Last summer Allianz, Aviva and the London Market Group (the LMG) sponsored one of these Supersquads and three of today’s guests are graduates of that scheme. Startup Sherpas calls them Sherpees.
In that project the Sherpees were asked to come up with ideas to help the Insurance sector better get the attention of young people and make them more likely to think about a career in insurance.
The Sherpees came up with a huge number of ideas and these were whittled down to the best, three of which you’re going to hear about today from their creators.
Howden Ventures and its insurer innovation partners are sponsoring the next Supersquad and it was the Head of Howden Ventures and recent Voice of Insurance guest, Tom Hoad who was the person who got me involved.
Today’s recording happened in the Lloyd’s Lab at a live event I chaired in which the Sherpees pitched their idea to an audience of industry people.
I grabbed five minutes with the presenters Chelsea Abili (Bottom left), Amaan Patel (Top Left) and Funta Olenrewaju (Top Right) just before they went on stage.
But first I spoke to Dan Wyllie (Bottom Right) Managing Director & Chief Operating Officer at Startup Sherpas to set the scene
LINKS:
https://startupsherpas.org/
Here’s the report that came out of the first Supersquad:
https://startupsherpas.org/register-interest-insurance-time-machine-report-2023
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
Tuesday Mar 19, 2024
Tuesday Mar 19, 2024
Greg Hendrick is a dream guest. He’s smart, incredibly knowledgeable and experienced, but also really easy and fun to talk to.
He’s also still only in the fourth year of building out a major insurer, reinsurer and capital markets partner completely from scratch.
For Greg and Vantage Risk, time moves a lot faster and experience is accelerated and compressed compared to the rest of us.
There’s a huge amount to talk about and that’s why I was delighted to be able to spend so much time talking to him again.
Here we catch up on how Greg’s strategy has evolved against plan and get into great detail about the state of the market all the way across the insurance value chain.
But I’m glad we also spend a lot of time looking at how technology is shaping the future of underwriting and completely re-organising the way that we all work and interact with our colleagues day to day.
After all, not many people get to the chance use all their experience to design a whole new business from scratch following a contemporary Blueprint with no legacy issues to deal with.
Greg sounds like he’s really enjoying this opportunity and I think you’ll enjoy it too.
NOTES:
Greg mentions a Dinos. That is of course Dinos Iordanou, Vantage Risk’s non-executive Chairman.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
Tuesday Mar 12, 2024
Tuesday Mar 12, 2024
Today’s guest has one of the biggest jobs in the London Market.
Kate Markham is CEO of Hiscox London Market and the last time we spoke she had just brought her business unit through a remediation strategy that was beginning to bear fruit.
Eighteen months later, and the results have been stellar.
Today the best are looking to invest and grow and get out on the front foot and lean into the opportunities that a still very strong market has to offer.
And this podcast is all about that. This is a business very much looking to the future.
Our conversation came about because Hiscox has been one of the first to experiment with artificial intelligence to help speed up and enhance the lead underwriting process and so I wanted to dig right into the detail of what Kate and her teams had done and what the results had been like.
So we spend much of this discussion going deep into this and examining where the next steps are going to lead. It’s a very heartening and positive message.
Underwriters aren’t going to be out of a job because they will be freed up to add real value in the assessment of risk and to enhance the service that they give brokers and innovate to improve the relevance and quality of the cover that can give their ultimate customers.
The emergence of a fully connected digital value chains is also going to make it much easier for a much larger share of world business to access the London Market.
After all if underwriters make it really simple to send something to London, and turnarounds are almost instant, why wouldn’t many more brokers seek quotes?
Kate is full of energy and enthusiasm and our conversation is fun and rattles along at a fast pace.
Kate is also one of those leaders who has the gift of instilling confidence in the people they come in contact with and this podcast put a spring in my step about the quality of the London Market’s future if it can grasp the unique opportunities it is currently presented with
I got a lot out of this chat and I think you will too.
NOTES:
I let the abbreviation D&F get through. It stands for Direct and Facultative and is big-ticket property business.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
Friday Mar 08, 2024
Friday Mar 08, 2024
Today’s guest is one of the most remarkable and exceptional people I have had on the show.
Guillaume Bonnissent is the CEO of Quotech, a business he founded just over four years ago.
With over 20 years in underwriting Guillaume can boast one of the most eclectic resumés of any of his peers.
He’s written almost every class going, via almost every distribution channel in the insurance value chain, spanning specialist insurance, treaty reinsurance, portfolio underwriting and an MGA.
This gives him a unique perspective on the needs of underwriters of all shapes and sizes, and indeed brokers too.
But the really remarkable bit is that he has always been a technologist. He learned coding as part of a business degree and has kept his skills up to date.
This meant that when in his last role he was looking for some software that it turned out didn’t exist, he was able to write a prototype version of what he needed himself.
The tool worked and he quickly saw the potential for a new software business and Quotech was born.
It’s a remarkable story which is really all about giving teams everything they need to do their jobs better.
It’s a very rare story of software made by an underwriter for underwriters.
In this podcast we’ll certainly learn all about Guillaume’s original inventions, which are being adopted by some very influential market businesses, but we’ll also have a really deep and far-ranging discussion about the long-term consequences of digitisation and artificial intelligence on the insurance value chain.
Guillaume is a real London Market original and I found it really easy and fun to talk to him. Listen on and I think you will find it as enlightening and enjoyable as I did.
LINKS
Quotech https://quotech.io/
Tuesday Mar 05, 2024
Tuesday Mar 05, 2024
Most of my interviewees are good at using insurance to solve problems, but today’s guests Natalia Dorfman and James Kench of Lloyd’s Lab Alumnus Kita are taking this to a whole new level.
This is because the problem Kita wants to help solve is what most would say is the biggest of our generation: Climate change.
Kita’s still going to do this by solving client problems and making underwriting profits but it is inventing a whole new class of insurance to do so.
Carbon credits are key to the world hitting its 2050 net zero targets, but as a major and highly valuable asset they need high quality insurance to be able to scale up at the speed that is needed if a meaningful positive climate impact is to be made.
If we think of a carbon credit in its simplest terms as a physical asset like a forest that has been planted to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, the amount of things that could go wrong is enormous.
The trees could burn down or blow over or die from drought, pests or disease. The grower might go bust or run off with your money and not plant anything.
Your carbon credit could be nationalised by a foreign government, or it could be wiped out by a change in the methodologies of those who calculate these things or it could just turn out that the trees you have planted might not sequester as much carbon as expected.
There’s a lot of moving parts and my example is the simplest of many increasing complex and technical solutions.
If we are to make a big dent in climate change we are going to need to scale a currently tiny industry many hundred times so that it grows as big as the Oil and Gas sector is today.
That’s where the multiplying effect of insurance comes in. If a project is insured, a fund might be able to buy into three projects instead of one and a bank will be able to lend much more using the same amount of capital.
By finding out what could go wrong the hard way Insurance also helps spread best practice and adds another layer of due diligence.
Whichever way you look at it, what Natalia and James are building is one of the most exciting new classes of insurance to emerge since cyber.
And it’s the good kind – insurance with a strong moral purpose, so any profits can come guilt-free.
Natalia and James are really impressive and I think you’ll find this podcast informative and inspiring.
Half and hour with these two and you’ll have a spring in your step and you’ll be recommending a career in insurance to every young person that you meet.
NOTES:
Here’s the link to the report we mention. This is well worth a read: https://resources.oxbowpartners.com/hubfs/202402%20Kita%20%20Oxbow%20Partners%20-%20Gross%20Written%20Carbon%20Report%20(05.02.24).pdf
Natalia and James can be contacted at https://www.kita.earth/
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
Today’s guest has just taken over the running of a reinsurance business that, like many other in the sector has been right-sizing and re-focusing its underwriting over the past few years.
But now Renaud Guidée and AXA XL Re are clearly out the other side and are looking to grow from their $2.5bn global premium base.
In this podcast we focus on the state of the reinsurance market, Renaud’s plans for the business as well as the question of how this reinsurer fits in strategically at one of the world’s largest insurance groups.
With executive experience in investment banking and with a challenging AXA Group role already under his belt, Renaud brings a refreshingly broad perspective to our conversation.
Renaud combines high intelligence with great charm and you’ll learn a lot from time spent in his company.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Today’s guest has had one of the broadest and most diverse careers of anyone I have interviewed.
Today Kera McDonald is the Chief Underwriting Officer of Swiss Re Corporate Solutions but over more than 25 years she has been an actuary and a pensions consultant, a risk manager, an aviation underwriter and a senior executive in an internal audit team.
I’d say that unique blend of experience is an excellent preparation for her current role, particularly as Swiss Re Corporate Solutions moves out of its remediation phase into a period of sustainable growth.
Kera is direct and easy to talk to and in this podcast we discuss the state of the global insurance market and Corporate Solutions’ strategy within it as well as this unique business’s position within its wider group and the applications of technology and artificial intelligence as the market digitises.
She doesn’t duck any difficult questions and is excellent and incredibly well-informed company.
I really benefitted from my time with Kera and I think you will too.
NOTES:
This interview was recorded on 22 February 2023 and so questions
are based on Swiss Re's Q3/9-month 2023 results.
A couple of abbreviations slipped through:
PYD stands for Prior Year claims Development.
And of course, CorSo is an abbreviation of Swiss Re Corporate Solutions itself..
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
Friday Feb 16, 2024
Friday Feb 16, 2024
Today I’m talking to someone with an incredibly long and varied career at the intersection between science, technology and insurance and reinsurance, on both the broking and underwriting sides of the business.
Now Mike Steel is General Manager of Moody’s RMS and is serving all facets of the industry from an independent perspective.
The legacy RMS business effectively invented the insurance and reinsurance modelling industry and from the evidence that follows, it has been reinvigorated by its acquisition by global ratings agency and data and analytics firm Moody’s.
I often liken the business of modelling to being a precision arms manufacturer when there’s a war on – demand for your products is insatiable. These days as formerly secondary perils become indistinguishable from primary threats and new digital and environmental ones are being created all the time, it is clear that the insurance war is opening up on multiple new fronts.
Being part of Moody’s is giving this business a whole new perspective on the world of risk, as well as far greater operational and financial capabilities to help measure and analyse those risks.
This could manifest itself in developing new products for non-insurance financial institutions and governments, or trying to codify Environmental Social and Governance factors in a format that the insurance industry can easily adopt.
What follows is a fascinating run through of what is in Mike’s very varied inbox.
It is important and valuable work that is going to keep Moody’s RMS and Mike very busy for decades to come.
Near the end of this Podcast I remark that Mike has a really interesting job.
And after a listen to this episode, I’m pretty sure you’ll agree
LINKS:
https://www.rms.com/
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Today’s guest is Tom Clementi, CEO of UK Government-backed terrorism reinsurer, Pool Re.
Now over thirty years old, Pool Re has been through a lot of recent changes that have reflected its growing maturity.
It has been classified as a Central Government Organisation by the Office for National Statistics and the UK Cabinet Office designated it as an Arm’s Length Body of the UK Treasury.
To add to that formalisation, which reflects its public role and unlimited State guarantee, Pool Re is moving from its tariff-led facultative reinsurance structure to a more sophisticated treaty relationship with its members.
Add to this the heightened sense of geopolitical risk in the world in 2024 and new UK legislation around safeguarding against the terror threat and Tom and I have lot to talk about.
This is a really lively discussion that covers the state of the global terrorism market, a frank assessment of the UK’s terror threat and Pool Re’s continued role in making and growing a private market well-funded enough to relieve pressure on the strained public purse.
Tom’s a great guest and his insights will give anyone wondering how successful public-private partnerships can be fostered a lot of excellent pointers.
NOTES:
We mentioned the UK Cyber Monitoring Centre. The recent Episode with James Burns has all the details:
https://thevoiceofinsurance.podbean.com/e/ep192-james-burns-cfc-classifying-cyber/
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/
We also thank our audio advertiser, Aventum Group
Please contact them on: voi@aventumgroup.com