The Voice of Insurance

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/

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/

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

Today’s guest is Robert Wiest CEO of MS Re. After a long and distinguished career in both insurance and reinsurance, much of which was spent at Swiss Re, Robert took on his latest role in September 2022. With prominent career roles in both P&C and Life - in Europe and Asia Robert is an extremely well-travelled and well-rounded professional and this broad experience shines through in the podcast. Robert is comfortable on any subject and he’s the sort of person with whom anyone could strike up a rapport. MS Re has rebranded and re-set the image it wishes to project out into the market and because of that we talk a lot about this mid-sized reinsurer’s strategy, appetites and growth plans. It’s clear from this meeting that the business has a strong idea of how to differentiate itself and maximise the benefits of the fertile reinsurance markets of 2024. But we also talk in detail about long-term big-picture topics as far-ranging as market digitisation artificial intelligence and how the industry should be attacking the problem of insuring the transition to net zero. Robert’s definitely one of us and is very generous with his insights. Listening back this encounter is packed with the learnings of a distinguished career and buzzes with the energy of someone with unambiguous ideas and lots of experience combined with the time and clear opportunity to execute upon them Robert’s clearly enjoying his new role and I think you’ll really enjoy this episode.   NOTES: We mention Charlie Goldie, MS Re’s CUO. Charlie features in the State of (Re)insurance 2023 Episode: https://thevoiceofinsurance.podbean.com/e/special-ep-the-state-of-reinsurance-2023/ 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

Today’s episode showcases a really important advancement in the provision of technology to the insurance industry. Back in the early days of computerisation we installed different systems in our businesses to do different jobs. We didn’t expect them to talk to each other. And because each was made of proprietary tech  – they almost certainly didn’t. Nowadays we want systems to ingest data sources and the output of other systems and we expect these new outputs to be easily ingestible further down the chain by our own suppliers and all the different departments of our business as well as regulators and other essential third parties. Common standards and modern connectivity are allowing this to happen. I suppose this is the difference between computerisation and digitisation. But this begs a change in the way technology providers go about their business. Either they will try to be all things to all people and produce their best attempts at solving every problem and answering every question that the insurance industry is trying to answer, or they will have to be more realistic and pragmatic. In a world brimming with excellent providers of increasingly specialist solutions, many are realising that the best outcomes for customers are going to come about when they are provided with a wide array of choice and ease of operation. A customer should be able to run different tools on the same platform without having to become an expert in plugging them all together themselves. Tech providers should be doing this for them and making their lives easy. There should also be the possibility of choosing between different competing options for certain tasks. This strategy is called an ecosystem approach and it is what we are going to be getting deep into today. To help us I spoke to Ian Summers Global Business Leader of AdvantageGo and Jeff Cohen who is a Senior Vice President at Zywave. Ian and Jeff are vastly experienced in their fields. Ian is the architect of the AdvantageGo ecosystem idea and Zywave is a core member of this affiliation. You absolutely don’t have to be a techie to find this discussion useful and Ian and Jeff are really approachable and good at explaining things to laypeople like me. Half an hour with these two and I guarantee you’ll be excited about the possibilities that a genuinely digitised insurance world are going to open up for all of us, not least in a brave new AI-enabled world. NOTES AND ABBREVIATIONS: We mentioned ISO, which is the Insurance Services Office. API is Application Programming Interface. ECF is the Electronic Claims File used in the London Market. LINKS: Learn more about AdvantageGo’s ecosystem here: https://www.advantagego.com/ecosystem/ Expect more additions as time progresses.

Today’s guest is a big personality in the UK insurance sector who has been working in and around our industry for almost 25 years. After a working as an insurance lawyer, an ombudsman, a consultant and a Director at the Chartered Insurance Institute Melissa Collett brings a really well-rounded level of experience to her current role as the inaugural CEO of Insurtech trade body Insurtech UK. In this podcast we talk about why Insurtech UK has been set up and what items are top of its agenda. There’s a huge amount going on. The UK’s Insurtech scene is the largest outside of the US and the body already has a hundred active members. There’s a lot to lobby on, from the speed and effectiveness of regulation to the many unfair quirks of the UK tax regime. There are also Government grants to help distribute and international agreements to be struck. Melissa is incredibly busy. But Insurtech UK is a very broad church and is trying to be quite a lot more than a lobby group representing members’ interests. It wants to be a club or an ecosystem that convenes Insurtechs, investors, service providers and incumbents to further the goal of fostering innovation in UK insurance via technology. Melissa is incredibly enthusiastic and bursting with energy and drive. I really enjoyed my time with her and I think you will too. After half an hour you’ll certainly be in no doubt as to what Insurtech UK is all about and how you can get involved. LINKS: https://insurtechuk.org/ 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

As CEO of Beazley, Adrian Cox runs one of our sector’s fastest-moving and best-rated insurance businesses and so any time I can get him behind a microphone and talking to me is time well spent. In the past year this firm has pioneered the placement of cyber cat bonds, undergone a major restructure with the formation of a US excess and surplus lines insurance company and made the most of the new opportunities being thrown up in North American property by more than doubling its underwriting volume there. In this podcast we talk about all these and an awful lot more. Adrian is excellent company and exudes the kind of confidence that senior brokers complain that they sometimes find lacking in the modern insurance and reinsurance market. In our talk we get a clear sense of Adrian’s insurance philosophy Here is someone with a clear way of understanding the insurance world and the confidence and authority to go and execute when he feels the time is right. Given the rare series of opportunities the global market is presenting brave and decisive underwriters in 2024, I can highly recommend a detailed listen. NOTES Adrian mentions Lloyd’s and now Beazley itself as being ‘A-fifteen’ in size. This a reference to AM Best’s fifteen-point Financial Size Category scale. XV is the largest size, denoting Capital and Surplus of $2bn or more. 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

Today’s podcast carries on where we left off after the State of the Reinsurance Market Special Episode which was released after the Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous of 2023. At Monte Carlo what everyone said they wanted after the great re-set of a year ago was orderliness. Buyers and sellers alike wanted a period of rational calm after the storm which could be used to clear some of the debris and to rebuild strained relationships. And calm and rationality is what everybody got. Reinsurance capital, profitability and crucially, confidence all recovered and we ended with a largely flat renewal overall. The aim of this podcast is to see how this bodes for the year ahead and the longer-term strategic direction of the reinsurance market for those who work with it, buy from it and invest in it. The big question is how long can the good times last for the newly-re-set and now highly profitable reinsurance world? Have reinsurers hauled themselves up to a peak, only to start sliding quickly down the other rockface, or have they scaled up the side of a ridge onto a new highly profitable plateau upon which they will stay encamped for as long as they can? To help me answer this, I have been able to speak to representatives from three of the top four reinsurance broking groups. David Priebe, Chairman of Guy Carpenter (pictured left) and James Vickers Chairman of Gallagher Re International (middle) are two of the longest-serving senior executives in the business and David Flandro Head of Industry Analysis and Strategic Advisory at Howden Tiger (right) is one of the sector’s longest-tenured analysts. They have all been providing insightful commentary on the industry for longer than I have been an insurance journalist and I have been interviewing them all for almost 20 years. I really had fun with these three interviews and the subsequent time spent blending this highly accomplished and eloquent trio’s thoughts together. It was a bit more work that usual, but I think it’s good value-added exercise and I hope you find it as useful as I did. NOTES Here are links to the reports and commentary I mentioned: Howden Tiger - A New World https://www.howdengroupholdings.com/sites/g/files/mwfley1156/files/2023-12/a-new-world-2024.pdf Gallagher Re – What a Difference a Year Makes https://www.ajg.com/gallagherre/news-and-insights/2024/january/what-a-difference-a-year-makes/ Guy Carpenter - January 1, 2024 Reinsurance Renewals Reflect a Motivated Market with Increasing Capital https://www.guycarp.com/company/news-and-events/news/press-releases/january-2024-renewals.html David Flandro mentioned Charlie Goldie, CUO of MS Re. He appeared prominently in both the 2022 and 2023 Monte Carlo Special Episodes – check the 2023 one out here: https://thevoiceofinsurance.podbean.com/e/special-ep-the-state-of-reinsurance-2023/ ABBREVIATIONS WACC = Weighted Average Cost of Capital TIV = Total Insured Values SPONSOR We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/

Today’s guest is Paul Templar, CEO of insurance technology solutions specialist VIPR. VIPR started out in the London Market 14 years ago and it’s best known for providing software solutions to the endless administrative problem of the ingestion and checking of data in the Delegated Authority (DA) space. And this goes right to the heart of what Paul and I are going to talk about today. This year is highly significant for carriers writing Delegated Authority business in the London Market because DDM – the system that they use to process this business into Lloyd’s - is going to be retired in September. LIMOSS - the not-for-profit body in charge of sourcing and operating common services for the London Market has confirmed the change. So, in just under nine months, a method of underwriting that produces around 40% of London Market premiums is going to take a big step into the unknown. There is an awful lot at stake and a huge amount of work has to be done between now and the autumn. And that’s why I am really grateful to have Paul as an expert guide through this potential maze. Paul is a great ambassador for his company and the wider market and I can’t think of a better-qualified advisor as the market transitions from a centralised service model to one that is likely to be driven by data standards. NOTES: DDM is an abbreviation of Delegated Data Manager. It traces its origins back to the DA Sats system. LIMOSS stands for London Insurance Market Operations & Strategic Sourcing LINKS: https://viprsolutions.com/

Today’s guest has just become the CEO of a business writing over $7 billion in gross premium a year, which if it were a standalone company, would make her one of the most powerful female CEOs in the global insurance industry. This is a major business unit that has been through a substantial amount of change and re-focusing of strategy in recent times, but which is now well placed to resume profitable growth as favourable market conditions continue. The business is QBE North America and the executive is Julie Wood. Julie has an insurance career in its third decade with senior management experience in broking as well as underwriting. This gives her a well-rounded perspective on all facets of our industry and means that our discussion spans a broad spectrum of what is happening in the North American insurance market as well as everything that QBE is doing to maximise its opportunity there Julie is really engaging and down-to-earth and has a very approachable manner which helps fill this podcast full of insights and candid exchanges. So if you are looking for a detailed update on the largest insurance market in the world from an important and dynamic participant in that market, I can highly recommend a listen. 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