The Voice of Insurance

Ep267 Clemens Jungsthöfel Hannover Re: Our clients don't like surprises - neither do we

Today’s guest has just taken over the reins at a business that has always aimed to be a company that people find easy to work with and enjoy dealing with. Having been around long enough to have met and interviewed all three of his immediate predecessors, I can attest to this. Despite being at the head of a key global reinsurer, all those leaders were always open, accessible and down to earth: very much the sort of executives who you imagined answered their own emails and organised their own diaries. So I am happy to report that Clemens Jungsthofel, the CEO of Hannover Re, represents a continuation of his firm’s refreshing and highly individual character. When you buy reinsurance, at the most fundamental level you are buying life insurance for your insurance company as you protect your capital base from potentially fatal losses. It’s not a relationship you enter into lightly. It’s much more like a marriage than a simple business transaction. That’s why cedants seek out reinsurers who are strong, stable, steady, consistent, discreet and trustworthy, whatever an unpredictable loss landscape or the rollercoaster ride of the market cycle throws at us. Listen on and I’ll wager you can hear Clemens projecting these qualities in the same way his predecessors did. What you see is what you get. The son of an insurance agent, Clemens is someone who has insurance running through his veins. He is one of us and exudes an air of calm unflappability. It’s easy to imagine entrusting him with a trade secret, or admitting you really need his help.What follows is a very timely, broad and deep discussion of the state of the market and Hannover Re’s strategy within it as well as a thorough examination of the short- and long-term industry impacts of phenomena as varied and diverse as the major changes in insurance distribution and AI. Here is someone I found the business of recording a podcast with extremely easy and pleasurable. I think you’ll find listening to it equally pleasant and incredibly useful.Before the industry heads down to Monte Carlo for its annual meeting I can highly recommend this episode as a primer for all the major talking points.LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Ep266 Jonathan Spry Envelop Risk: Bringing Underwriters inside the Black Box

I really enjoyed today’s interview because is it packed full of eureka moments. Sometimes looking at a business from the outside it is hard to work out exactly what it does and how and why it does it. Visiting the website of a company of this sort tends to throw up more questions than it answers. And that’s frustrating for a journalist as It’s my job to make sense of these thingsFor me cyber reinsurance underwriter Envelop Risk was one of those business – a bit of a black box that was hard to see into. I had known Jonathan Spry its CEO for about twenty years. Jonathan is very smart and has always operated at the high added value end of the Insurance value chain, where insurance and reinsurance blur into the capital markets, but in all that time I had never sat down and had a really long, researched conversation with him. And that’s why this is such a satisfying interview. In the next forty-five minutes we dissect Envelop’s augmented underwriting business model, looking at its Lloyd’s and Bermuda platforms and its Machine-learning-powered approach to underwriting cyber risk.But this conversation goes way beyond and examines the future of underwriting itself in the global syndicated risk and capital markets, as well as outlining some of the new classes of business that will emerge in the coming decades.Envelop has an appetite way beyond Cyber and this is a really rewarding encounter with someone who understands our business in a more tech and capital savvy way than most of us. At the end of this conversation I felt like the person who has been allowed deep inside the black box and gets to see how it works and interrogate its way of thinking. Jonathan was on excellent form and was disarmingly open and accessible about Envelop’s modus operandi.I feel enlightened for this experience and so will you NOTES: 
GOFAI = Good Old-Fashioned AI
LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com
 

Ep265 Gregg Bundschuh EPIC: A Different Type of Matrix

If you just confined your view to the top four brokers, you might easily assume that not much has happened in the US retail broking segment in the last ten years. But if you broadened you view to the top ten or twenty, you’d be faced with a very large number of billion-dollar-plus revenue broking groups that you would have been hard pressed to name ten years ago and many of which didn’t exist as far back as the turn of the millennium. This has come about through huge sums in private investment, a lot of strategic realignment and a considerable amount of M&A. There are a lot of untold stories buried in this remarkable era of expansion and this podcast is all about beginning to remedy that because today’s guest forms part of this remarkably fast-evolving cohort. Gregg Bundschuh is the chief Growth Officer at EPIC, the retail broking arm of the wider Galway Holdings business, which also includes wholesaler JENCAP.As the business approaches $2bn in annual revenues and this podcast does a thorough examination of the intermediary’s specialist business model. As a construction lawyer turned construction broker, entrepreneur and now senior management executive, Gregg’s career is in many ways a personal embodiment of what EPIC is trying to build. It’s all about highly-specific top-down vertical industry expertise that gives an edge in chosen niches, adding more value and building a loyal and growing customer base that doesn’t want to be without your specialist knowledge. The icing on the cake is to then try to orchestrate all the different specialisms so that the client can be served everything they need through a co-ordinated EPIC offering. It’s an incredibly ambitious and challenging way of doing business and one that is setting the bar extremely high. For example, continued above-average growth is needed to fund constant reinvestment in keeping the knowledge and talent base at the cutting edge. But it’s also incredibly refreshing and makes for an enlightening and enjoyable discussion. Gregg is great company and is an insurance player to his core. Listen on and the next 50 minutes will give you an awful lot of original business ideas to think about. NOTES: SIR = Self-Insured RetentionLINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Sp Ep Jeff Ward Ebix Europe: The Unquestionable Benefits of Data-First

Todays’ guest has been working on implanting the best technology into the London Market since the days when computer screens only displayed varying shades of green. He’s someone who I have known for twenty years and have come to rely upon to unpack all the jargon, spell out the acronyms and explain in layman’s terms what is really happening in the ongoing process of London Market technological reform. This is because Jeff Ward, the sales Director of Ebix Europe, is very wise, very patient and also very good company. He also has clear, common-sense opinions and is good at giving logical, concise answers to complex questions, when others might end up over-elaborating, or indeed over-simplifying.In short Jeff Ward is a market gem and an invaluable friend to help navigate the complex process of digitisation in which the market currently finds itself. Ebix Europe was behind the first iteration of PPL and is now in the market with the latest generation of that market pioneer, a sophisticated digital placing system called PlacingHub.As we sit on the cusp of a genuine revolution in the way global business is to be transacted and information flows through the market, Jeff outlines how the world of electronic placing is likely to develop and explains the genuine complexity of the re-engineering of London’s core accounting and settlement systems in the first phase of the BluePrint 2 reforms. He also explains how adoption of data-first standards is fundamental, outlines why early attempts to change brokers’ and underwriters’ timeworn behaviour during the quoting and placing process did not succeed and looks at the best use cases, and probable limitations of, AI in insurance. I highly recommend you take the next 45 minutes to meet Jeff Ward, my great insurance technology friend and guide. I am absolutely certain that in no time he will become yours too.NOTES:CDR = Core Data RecordGRLC = Global Reinsurance & Large Commercial StandardsLINKS: https://ebixeurope.co.uk/

Ep264 Andrew McMellin: Putting Markel on the Map

The global, wholesale and specialty insurance and reinsurance segment of the global market has been putting out very strong results in recent times. If I had to highlight a consistent theme in my interviews of the past year, it would be an almost universal desire among carriers for continued growth, but without compromising on profitability as appetites return and the market becomes more competitive.Today’s guest is a senior underwriter who embodies that conundrum.Andrew McMellin is President of Markel International, a business that has done extremely well in the past few years, and which has set itself ambitious growth targets for the next. This podcast examines the delicate balance that allows growth to continue to flow down to the bottom line and not just add volume on the top. Andrew has had a long and successful career and his insight and long-term perspective is extremely valuable. In this podcast we examine Markel International’s growth strategy in detail and on our way evaluate all the concurrent phenomena impacting the market, such as digitisation and the streamlining of follow capacity, as well as the impact of AI and a more collaborative reinsurance market.Andrew is on exceptional form and this is a very enjoyable encounter with a market player on the top of his game and looking to maximise the opportunities that a still healthy insurance market is affording.
LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Sp Ep Simon Pollack & Owen Whelan of Calibrant: Sledgehammers for Scalpels - Precision in Portfolio Management

Today's Episode is fun and insightful from start to finish and that is entirely down to my guests. One of the great Eureka moments in insurance comes when you meet an actuary who is a great communicator. Five minutes chatting to them usually unlocks understanding that would take you years to glean yourself, or which indeed you may never have worked out without their help.Luckily today I am talking not to one, but two such people. Simon Pollack (pictured top) is the Founder and Director and Owen Whelan is the Managing Director of Calibrant, a really interesting, relatively young business concentrating on portfolio management, particularly in the burgeoning field of Delegated Underwriting Authority. With MGAs continually gaining market share and also garnering extra scrutiny from senior managers and market regulators, Calibrant is in a fast-growing segment of the market. The core of what Calibrant and its Sybil software platform does is to wring improvements to the loss ratio of underwriting portfolios through joined-up, granular analysis. It sounds simple in theory, but in practice bridging all the gaps between the underwriting, reserving, pricing and senior management functions is the culmination of Simon and Owen’s multi-decade experience in the industry. This is a duo right on the top of their game and this podcast is absolutely packed with valuable insights garnered from long and successful careers in our business. Simon and Owen met as London Market drinking buddies and you should think of this podcast as a very enjoyable chat in a bar with two great friends and a glass of your favourite tipple in your hand.You’ll learn a lot and after listening to this I expect you’ll want to spend a lot more time with this fun and down-to-earth duo.LINKS: https://www.calibrantinsurance.com/

Ep263 Anthony Siggers, Marsh: The digital broker of the future

Today’s guest is a visionary and in the next 40 minutes he’s going to outline the future of broking. As insurance placement process evolves from being the movement of documents around the market to a seamless flow of data between parties, we are on the cusp of a big bang in complex insurance. If you think that this is something that won’t be happening any time soon, you are completely wrong - it’s already happening. Anthony Siggers is the Digital Leader for Marsh Specialty UK and Marsh has already fully digitised 70% of its London slips.Given that Marsh places about $15bn dollars of premium a year into the London Market, this is one tech change that is already way past the tipping point.If a massive broker like Marsh can do it, so can everyone else.
So we’re digitising the market, but what next? That’s what we spend most of this podcast discussing. For example how much of the market will be lead capacity and how much automatic or algorithmic follow?
How will a broker be working in the near future?What will happen to costs, commissions and insurance penetration? And what about the impact of AI?And what are the secondary effects of all this change likely to be?Siggers has been implementing technology and pursuing entrepreneurial ideas in and around insurance and the financial markets for thirty years. He is eloquent and he is also great fun. This interview will completely change your perception of where the syndicated insurance and reinsurance markets are heading and how fast they are doing so.If you only listen to one podcast this year, make sure it is this one.NOTES:JSON (pronounced like the name Jason) is a file format for data transferLINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Sp Ep Beazley: Cyber Risk - From Breach to Boardrooms and Beyond

Today, we’re going to go deeper into the world of cyber attacks than we have ever done before.We’ll be looking at the insurance claims that they produce as well as the longer-term consequences for their victims Often as journalists covering cyber insurance we focus on the big hacks, the headline numbers, and gloss over the detail of the personal stories and the real hard yards that have to be run to recover from an attack and the potential long-term consequences for a business, its directors, its customers and all other stakeholders. As the immediate damage and business interruption triggers potential regulatory, statutory and other serious third-party consequences, these hard yards often have to be run down multiple different paths simultaneously. The in-depth interviews that follow will deepen your understanding of the more complex and long-tail nature of this peril. I’d like to put you right in the room in the shoes of the Directors of a company as an attack unfolds.We’re going behind the scenes to uncover what it’s really like when a business becomes the target of a digital assault, from the immediate shock to the long-term repercussions that are often ignored by boards. We’re also going to go into detail on how the nature of the cyber threat and the tactics of cyber criminals are evolving.To help me in this task my guests are:Magnus Jelen, (pictured top) Director of Incident Response EMEA for Coveware, a firm that helps victims of cyber extortion recover their data; and three senior executives at Beazley: Raf Sanchez (pictured 2nd from top), Beazley’s Head of Cyber Services, Cyber Risks. Melissa Collins, (pictured 2nd from bottom) Head of Third Party Cyber & Tech Claims, and Wayne Imrie, (pictured bottom) Head of London Market Wholesale Executive Risks. Magnus and Raf are right on the front line, dealing with the immediate consequences of a hack. Magnus even deals with the hackers themselves. Melissa deals with the external insurance claims that result and Wayne is a Directors and Officers (D&O) specialist who has a deep understanding of how the D&O and Cyber insurance products interact.LINKS: As promised, here is the link to Beazley's latest Risk and Resilience Survey Spotlight on Tech Transformation & Cyber Risk 2025:https://www.beazley.com/en-001/news-and-events/spotlight-on-tech-transformation-cyber-risk-2025/

Ep262 Jason Howard Acrisure International: A very Simple Model

This week’s Episode is a burst of energy. Jason Howard is President of Acrisure International and has the task of looking after everything in the Acrisure Group that is outside the US, Reinsurance and Wholesale.This means most of the world is effectively his oyster. A group as ambitious and fast-moving as Acrisure needs someone with enormous drive and enthusiasm to deliver on such a universal role and Jason is the embodiment of that. In this podcast Jason explains Acrisure’s global end-to-end insurance strategy in great detail – from a retail broker anywhere in the world all the way to Lloyd’s Syndicates and the capital markets.This makes for an incredibly broad and rich conversation.Naturally we talk about the role of strategic M&A in building a global network, but we also discuss the market and how a business like Acrisure can differentiate itself by joining up the global value chain and making it work more responsively and more efficiently. We also dissect the less tangible questions of corporate culture and the industry’s developing relationship with technology and automated underwriting in general and AI in particular. The business’s explosive growth record speaks for itself – as does Jason. I first met Jason in an underwriter’s queue over thirty years ago – I can verify that if anything today he has more energy, enthusiasm and positivity than he did back then as a young man. It’s infectious. I promise that the next half an hour will pass by very quickly and in it you will learn exactly what makes Acrisure International tick and a lot more besides.NOTES: Jason was last on the show five years ago when he was CEO of Beach & Associates, before it was rebranded to Acrisure Re. Here’s the link to that podcast, recorded 240 Episodes in the past: https://thevoiceofinsurance.podbean.com/e/ep-22-casualty-capital-and-covid-with-jason-howard-ceo-of-beach/
LINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Ep261 Dave Matcham & Chris Jones IUA: You've got to show tangible value to members

Today’s Episode is a really enjoyable two-hander.After over twenty years running the IUA (or the International Underwriting Association, to spell it out in full) Dave Matcham has just passed his CEO role over to Chris Jones.So this episode serves a double mission. The first is to mark the extraordinary career of Dave Matcham, the London Market’s longest-serving CEO and someone who has helped guide the market through more than 20 years of change.With Dave we look back on some of the most significant milestones and sometimes tumultuous events shaping a lifetime of service to the market.Then we will bring everything up to date as Chris and Dave outline the London Company market trade body’s agenda on all the most pressing issues of the day.Running a trade body is often a thankless and unglamorous task, with a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes to make sure the market functions as it should.Dave has been a tireless servant for his membership and the broader London Market and Chris has big shoes to fill.Dave has always been one of the most knowledgeable and approachable senior figures in the market, with a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to business. From this meeting Chris is continuing in that mould.So, if you want a sense of how international insurers’ relationship with the UK regulators is developing, where market process reform is heading and how the market is dealing with issues such as the application of AI and the policing of non-financial misconduct, please listen on.Dave and Chris are well-rounded, level-headed and very often light-hearted company and the time will fly by.We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com