As journalists we tend to sprinkle superlative terms such as industry legend around a little too liberally.

But today’s guest definitely qualifies.

As a founder of Renaissance Re Jim Stanard helped completely transform the way the industry analyses and underwrites catastrophe risk and cemented Bermuda’s place in the insurance and reinsurance world.

He also co-founded global challenger reinsurance broker Tiger Risk.

Now he is back in his heartland as chair of the newly-independent Ariel Re.

Here we talk about everything you would ever want to know about how to be a successful underwriter building a sustainable portfolio.

Listening back it is a remarkable conversation and one marked by Jim’s extraordinary good humour and openness. We spent a lot more time laughing than is normal in a serious hard market reinsurance conversation.

But that is all down to Jim’s open-mindedness and remarkably broad interests.

I hadn’t met him before this meeting but it really doesn’t show. I learned a lot, including that this industry leader has a not unimportant side line on the music scene.

So do enjoy the conversation.

A couple of Notes:

Jim told me later he misspoke about Lotus being the first spreadsheet package and meant to say Visicalc.

And the quote about predicting the future is variously attributed to Yogi Berra, Sam Goldwyn or Danish physicist Niels Bohr, depending on who you ask.

LINKS

Jim’s album "Color outside the lines" can be streamed on Spotify and is available on Amazon and other music sellers.

Go to: www.jimstanardmusic.com to find out more.

We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo - enabling underwriters to increase the speed and accuracy of decision making:

https://www.advantagego.com/

We also thank Claims Direct Access (CDA) for their support today:

https://www.claimsdirectaccess.com/

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