The Voice of Insurance

Special Episode Richard Chattock and Stephen Brittain of Insurtech Gateway: To discontinue the old we must accelerate the new

Regular listeners will know that I really rate today’s guests and what they are trying to do for the market. I also find them really good company – they are fun, smart infectiously enthusiastic and are always brimming with new ideas. Every time I have a meeting with them I come away with something new to think about. Listen on and you will too.The Insurtech Gateway has been a pioneer in the insurtech space, providing early stage investment as well as licences, insurance knowledge and industry support and connections to entrepreneurs trying to put innovative insurance ideas into practice. It’s just come through an important milestone. Its inaugural fund is maturing and it second fund has now been raised. In a cooling tech investment climate this as clear a validation of the Gateway’s business model as you’ll need. My conversation with director and co-founder Stephen Brittain (bottom right) and CEO Richard Chattock (top right) is valuable because it brings together everything the Gateway has learned from the cutting edge of insurance investment from the past six years. None of this is theoretical – this is all hard-won experience earned by the risking of real capital in the real world with real people.We examine what has worked and what hasn’t and look at the emerging trends that are going to drive the successful insurtechs of the future. Richard and Stephen make a great pairing. Stephen has been on the podcast many times before but Richard hasn’t. Yet it is Richard who will be familiar to many listeners as he is an insurance lifer with a high profile and long and successful underwriting career who has made the move to venture capitalism. Meanwhile Stephen is an outside innovator looking inwards to insurance. This is an excellent combination and makes for a really relaxed, highly enjoyable and insightful listen. I’m pretty sure you’ll find it both inspiring and useful.
LINKS
www.insurtechgateway.com

Ep140 Kate Markham CEO Hiscox London Market: No one-hit wonders

Today’s guest is someone who is bringing a rigorous and effective management style that the London Market might not previously have been accustomed to. Kate Markham brings extensive business experience to the role of running Hiscox London Market. Some of this comes from entirely outside our industry as well as the retail insurance space.Her work in restoring top performance to this Lloyd’s blue-chip and keeping it there has entailed a lot of new management thinking and not inconsiderable culture change to embed a performance mindsight that is bottom-up rather than top-down.It’s refreshing and this podcast dives right into the issues facing Hiscox and the wider London Market on immediate concerns about reinsurance renewals and how they will affect coverage such as property cat, and classes such as specialty and cyber. We also talk about the bigger picture, addressing digital transformation, algorithmic underwriting and the diverse talent requirements of the market of the future.Kate is personable, eloquent and concise as well as being direct and this is a really enjoyable exchange with someone who is right on top of their brief.LINKSWe thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/We also thank this Episode’s advertising supporter Oxbow Partnershttps://oxbowpartners.com

Ep139 Mark Cloutier Group CEO Aspen: Still taking volatility down

Mark Cloutier is a dream guest.And that’s not just because he’s the person some of the smartest financial minds in the industry turn to to shepherd and shape their strategic turnaround investments. Mark Cloutier knows the insurance industry inside and out and from top to bottom, but what makes him a great podcast guest is his openness and willingness to talk about how the insurance, reinsurance and capital markets fit together and interact with each other. He’s also one of the most easygoing people you’ll meet. His job must involve huge stresses and strains, but you would never know if you met him. Well today you do get to meet him and together we’ll go on a grand tour of Aspen and its place in the most dynamic and challenging markets for a generation. Mark’s long career and perspective combined with Aspen’s multi-faceted business model bring a really great insight into this jittery and completely plastic market environment. Inflation, industry capital and investor appetites, property cat, specialty in a post-Ukraine world, the explosion in hybrid carriers, how to handle the ESG challenge – there is valuable understanding and a calm authority backing every statement.LINKSWe thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/We also thank this Episode’s advertising supporter Oxbow Partnershttps://oxbowpartners.com

Special Episode: Full Digital Ambition. Building a digital-first marketplace

Building a fully digital marketplace for insurance in London has been a tantalising long-term goal for all of my 30-year career.Only too often this has proved a mirage that has turned to sand as the market got close. Dare I say it but this time things seem very different. Now robust core standards are providing foundations of solid rock upon which the market can build with greater confidence.Technology is also more advanced and more readily available at a much more reasonable cost. Today even the smallest player can jump ahead without busting the bank.Indeed the biggest obstacle to accelerated change is now cultural. And that is where the biggest transformation has taken place – in the minds of market leaders. Now instead of the technologists trying to drag the market kicking and screaming towards modernisation change is starting to be demanded of technologists from practitioners themselves. The stars are finally coming into alignment.That’s why I am delighted I could talk to three highly experienced insurance technology experts about this. Kirstin Duffield is CEO of Insurance software business Morning Data and is an advisor to the London Market Data Council, Hélène Stanway also advises the Data Council and is a strategic adviser at r10 Consulting as well as being a senior counsel to numerous other tech bodies. Finally Marcus Broome, is Chief Platform officer at insurance trading platform Whitespace.All have experience providing technological solutions to the Insurance market going back to the early-to mid-1990s. These people have been at the heart of London’s digital journey for the last 25-30 years.They are technologists steeped in deep insurance understanding and their cumulative knowledge of every step and mis-step that the market has taken in that period is second to none. Luckily for you and me they are also a trio of concise and passionate communicators who know how to speak to laypeople. So what follows is a really useful run through of the current market modernisation programmes that dispels a lot of myths and clears up a lot of misunderstanding we might all have about what exactly the latest reforms are and the benefits they might bring to the market. I found it really inspiring and helpful and I’m sure you will too. After this encounter I feel much more confident that the first fully digital fruits of the last 30 years’ labours may finally be within our grasp, particularly if these three have anything to do with it.NOTES:Two acronyms got through unexplained.PAS is a Policy Administration System And GLRC standards refer to the Global Reinsurance and Large Commercial Carrier electronic standards produced by ACORD.LINKSWe thank Whitespace for its support today https://www.whitespace.co.uk/

Ep138 Bill Jewett CEO Obsidian Insurance Holdings: Good shepherds of reinsurance capital

Anyone keeping an eye on the overarching trends in the global wholesale and speciality insurance and reinsurance markets of the last few years cannot have failed to notice the explosive growth of the hybrid insurance carrier. Burgeoning Billions of dollars of premium are being directed in new and interesting ways through a cohort of businesses that ten years ago didn’t really exist. Regular listeners to this podcast will know that this has been a repeated topic of conversation with guests on the show. I think today’s guest will be able to put this topic into context better than almost anyone else. That’s because Bill Jewett CEO of Obsidian Insurance Holdings boasts a more than forty-year career right in the heart of the US and Bermuda reinsurance community. This means Bill is very much one of us and can speak our language.He can also articulate what is happening on the ground because he is personally one of the architects of the hybrid carrier revolution and what looks very much to be a secular change in the distribution of commercial insurance.I had known Bill since his decade at Endurance and was really glad to catch up with him again after such a long time. I’m sure many of you out there will similarly be re-acquainting yourself with an old friend from the business. Bill’s got a great story to tell and this podcast will dispel any lingering myths or doubts you have about the major changes afoot in how many MGAs will source their capital in the future.LINKSWe thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/We also thank this Episode’s advertising supporter Oxbow Partnershttps://oxbowpartners.com

Special Episode: The State of (Re)insurance

Regular listeners will know that usually I talk to one person at a time, but over the course of four days in Monte Carlo I managed to record over 20 short interviews with industry leaders.This means this podcast is an in-depth documentary on the state of global insurance, reinsurance and the insurance-related capital markets.It’s a document detailing the state of mind of key actors that make and influence the market.The great thing about Monte Carlo is that a consensus can emerge, even from thousands of disparate voices. This year that definitely happened This is without doubt the toughest and most dynamic (re)insurance market since late 2005 – and I should know because I have been to every Monte Carlo gathering from then onwards.My aim is to try and capture the essence of what it is like to be in the room with the top decision-makers. You will experience a tough market consensus emerging and be able to hear the different harmonies and minor discords from within this great chorus of voices.Enjoy this very special podcast!LINKS:We thank our Special Episode Sponsor, Stephens Rickard:https://www.stephensrickard.com

Ep137: Richard Brindle and Dan Burrows of Fidelis - changing the structure of capital forever

Some people seem to have things happen to them, while others make things happen. Richard Brindle (pictured right) and Dan Burrows (pictured left) of Fidelis are in the latter category and are about to make history by becoming the first traditional balance sheet insurance company to split its underwriting and its capital into two independent entities.It’s a typically bold and fascinating move and one which throws up many questions. Are they doing this because valuations of balance sheets are so low and those of MGAs are so high, or are there other motives for going through such a painful process?The answers are all here. Richard also unloads a huge amount of his insight on the state of the reinsurance and specialty markets as we head into the 1.1 renewal season.It’s the toughest talk I’ve heard in my career and that includes the post Katrina Rita and Wilma market of 2006, into which Lancashire was born.This all adds up to one of the best podcasts you’ll listen to this year, or any year.NOTESOne slip of the tongue on an acronym. SRT stands for Significant Risk Transfer not Strategic Risk Transfer.
LINKSWe thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/We also thank this Episode’s advertising supporter Oxbow Partnershttps://oxbowpartners.com

Special Episode: Navigating ESG, with Miqdaad Versi of Oxbow Partners

Anyone listening to this podcast over the past couple of years can’t have failed to notice the way that Environmental, Social and Governance or ESG has moved quite quickly to the top of the industry agenda.Taking into consideration the Environmental Social and Governance impacts of all of our customers, all of our investments, all of our suppliers and all of our own activities is something that may be a little too much more many of us in the industry to get our heads around. Once regulators get involved, and it is only a matter of time before they do, ESG will become the biggest potentially existential threat to insurers since the implementation of Solvency II.That’s why it is important to seek expert advice. And that’s why I am delighted to introduced Miqdaad Versi, a principal at Oxbow Partners.Oxbow Partners is a management consultancy specialising in the insurance industry. And Miqdaad focuses on insurance, reinsurance and ESG and sustainability and has authored a first-of-its-kind report on ESG in conjunction with the Bermuda Business Development Agency (BDA).This podcast lays out his credentials as well as the scale of the problem. If you have been too scared even to start thinking about what to do about the enormous ESG challenge ahead, this is an excellent place to begin.Miqdaad is smart, eloquent and passionate on this topic. He’s also very optimistic that the insurance sector has the skills to navigate ESG’s threats as well as to be able to make the most of the huge opportunities that it is going to throw up. This podcast is also full to the brim of useful information and easy-to-follow advice. NOTES and LINKSMiqdaad Versi’s email is mversi@oxbowpartners.comThe report we mention is ESG in Bermuda: The Rising Tide – The maturity of ESG on the island and what it means for the (re)insurance industryYou can access it here: https://oxbowpartners.com/blog/esg-in-bermuda-the-rising-tide/Find out more about Oxbow Partners at:https://oxbowpartners.com/

Ep136 David Howden & Rod Fox: Blurring the Lines

What an absolute blast this episode was to record!I often interview irrepressible, energetic and ultra-enthusiastic executives on the podcast – it goes with the territory after all.Indeed I have had both of today’s guests on the show before, but there is something about bringing them together that caused sparks to fly and brought a different dynamic into play.David Howden of Howden Group and Rod Fox of TigerRisk Partners are both founders of their respective businesses and are two of the most successful broking entrepreneurs of their generation. The two are combining their firms in an M&A deal that is creating a highly credible challenger reinsurance broker to the big three. This podcast is almost like a metaphor for what they are trying to achieve together. One and one seem to add up to quite more than two and both were already larger than life before we started!No questions were off the table. It’s all here. There’s nothing left out.
LINKS
Howden Re has an excellent Reinsurance Market report out.
It's called Reinsurance - A Tipping Point 
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/We also thank this Episode’s advertising supporter Oxbow Partnershttps://oxbowpartners.com

Ep135 Albert Benchimol: An appetite for growth

Today’s guest is someone who, despite being the CEO of a very prominent publicly-quoted global speciality insurer and reinsurer, has been keeping himself out of the media spotlight for the last couple of years. This is because like many other leaders in our world, Albert Benchimol CEO of AXIS Capital has been busy overseeing underwriting remediation and a wholesale re-set of his business’s strategic positioning as the market has transitioned. Now I’m delighted to announce that he has come out the other side and has agreed to be on the show. The Albert I encountered in this episode was someone looking forward to the future with a lot of energy, optimism and enthusiasm. No subjects were off the menu, so after swiftly polishing off the elephant in the room topic of Axis’s widely publicised decision to pull out of property reinsurance, we expanded out into a really broad discussion that encompasses, rate adequacy, the rise of the MGA, inflation, ESG and industry diversity to name but a few.Albert’s now been CEO of AXIS for over a decade and it’s that experience and sense of authority that I think shines through every minute of this lively encounter.We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/We also thank this Episode’s advertising supporter Oxbow Partnershttps://oxbowpartners.com/