The Voice of Insurance

Today’s guest is back on the show in a role he has only recently accepted – that of Chair of the London Market Group (the LMG). Sean McGovern is probably the market’s best qualified incumbent for this job, and in this podcast I found Sean completely on top of his brief; Pushing the UK political establishment hard for changes to the UK regulatory regime to make it more accountable and conscious of the market’s global competitive position; banging the drum to attract talent and develop market-wide initiatives that benefit all participants, big and small; and helping to create consensus around and drive adoption of the London Market’s ongoing technological reform processes. We talked about everything – there were no taboos – not even Brexit! In my dealings with him over the years, Sean has always been incredibly direct and often surprisingly candid and this encounter is no different. This episode will get you up to speed on what’s topping the LMG’s agenda and what Sean, and the rest of the team are doing on the London Market and its clients’ behalf to make sure what everyone needs to happen, happens. I also think it’ll make any London Market practitioners listening feel particularly lucky to be so well represented. Well, see what you think. NOTES We refer to a Caroline. That of course is Caroline Wagstaff, CEO of the LMG, last on the show in Episode 141. LINKS We mentioned the London Insurance Life website: https://londoninsurancelife-lmg.com/ I can highly recommend everyone forwards this to any young person looking for a job, whether they are specifically interested in a career in the London Market or not. We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/

Today’s episode is a real treat because we are doing something that we rarely do. That something is to undertake a genuine appraisal of what has gone well and what hasn’t in a business in the time since we last spoke. I often interview tech-focused entrepreneurs who have visions of how to transform the industry for the better. But what I almost never do is get them back on the show to examine in detail how their ideas fared when the came in direct contact with the often harsh reality of the industry as it is today. But I suppose James York, the founder and CEO of Peaccce is not like other insurance entrepreneurs. In fact I have never met anyone quite like James. Two years ago he was on the show espousing insurance reviews as a way of achieving a new type of consumer insurance platform sitting somewhere between search and price comparison. Now he’s back on the show to report in graphic detail how that experience went – and how he has adapted to the realities of the marketplace. It’s honest, sometimes brutally so. In tech everyone is always going on and on about how it’s so important to nurture the ability to fail fast and iterate – except almost no-one will admit to having done so. Just because your idea is right it doesn’t mean that it will be accepted with open arms. But James a robust enough character to take setbacks on the chin and re-focus. His latest idea on how to advance his vision is spectacularly simple and incredibly useful and his enthusiasm and energy is completely undiminished. This is an incredibly valuable conversation because it is borne form hard experience. It’s also one that anyone interacting with the Insurtech world will easily relate to and learn a huge amount from. LINKS CAR QR: https://peaccce.com/carqr Peacce: https://peaccce.com/

Todays’ guest is a broking pioneer with a very clear vision and an even clearer plan for how to achieve that vision. Steve McGill founded McGill and Partners almost four years ago and first appeared on this podcast about a year into the firm’s existence. It’s been over two years since he came on the show. Two years is a long time for anyone, but for a start-up business it is practically a lifetime. In two years the Steve on this podcast hasn’t change a bit, but the global business he runs has really taken shape. With revenues exceeding $170mn and the core build-out of the firm’s global infrastructure largely complete, the focus is unrelentingly on continuing and trying to accelerate growth from here on. Steve remains hugely focused and the strategy and vision remains the same from day one – acquire talent and customers, not businesses, and stay narrow and deep in specialisms while avoiding head on competition with the biggest global generalist brokers. In this podcast we take stock of how far the firm has come in a short period of time, against a backdrop of broking upheaval caused by attempted M&A, a global pandemic and major armed conflict. We also get insights into the transformed reinsurance landscape, the revolution in insurance distribution through the hybrid carrier and MGA incubator phenomenon and the logical consequences of increased digitisation on the market from one of the finest strategic broking minds in the business. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/

My career in insurance was spent largely as a generalist and that’s why when I meet a specialist I really enjoy it. There is something amazing about the level of nuance and detail that specialists can reach into that adds enormous value to the rest of us if we have time to get all of the details out of them. Today’s specialist is James Boyce CEO of Global Specialties at Guy Carpenter which means we are in for a treat because we are getting the best of both worlds. That’s because Guy Carpenter can share as broad a global view of the market as is possible but at the same time we get an incredibly deep level of specialist knowledge and understanding. In today’s show we are focusing primarily on the retro markets. James and his colleagues have been in the thick of it and in this Episode we really clear the decks about where the market has landed after one of the most turbulent renewal periods in its history. I think that the picture that emerges is quite positive. The market has made rational changes that will set it in good stead for seasons to come, but although the product has fundamentally repriced right to the top of its useful range, the market is clearing and is a lot more predictable than it was at the end of last year. The underlying health of the market has also been buoyed by the news that despite Hurricane Ian and the Ukraine conflict, the retro market managed to post a profit in 2022 and has moved decisively back up the value chain, well away from attritional exposures. James is excellent company – well, he is a broker after all – and after this episode you’ll be right up to speed with the mood of underwriters and their capital backers in this the highest, but often least understood end of the capital stack that underpins the global insurance industry. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/

I really enjoy talking to people who are full of energy because some of that energy rubs off. Bob Kimmel CEO of K2 Insurance Services’ return to the podcast with K2 CAT’s Head Underwriter David Carson is a case in point. Here we find Bob buzzing with the possibilities that significant new investment from Warburg Pincus can afford the firm as it looks to accelerate growth and double in size to a $3bn GWP platform over the next 4 to 5 years. David’s also full of energy after the decisive rupture in the reinsurance market at 1.1 has produced what he describes as the best market in property cat since 1993. This is an incredibly candid and fluid discussion. Bob is very open about the potential squeeze that may be coming for MGA and other intermediaries’ margins as reinsurers and carriers push back hard on commissions and trim underperforming agencies from their portfolios. But he’s also really happy about having fresh dry powder to make the most of cooling valuations and special situations as interest rates rise and debt-heavy buyers are priced out of out of a hitherto frothy M&A market. Bob also explains why being a hybrid carrier with a balance sheet was great when K2 was smaller and needed to incubate underwriting talent, but became a distraction to the core business as the group scaled to the $1.5bn of gross premiums it now underwrites on behalf of the market. This is fascinating under-the-hood stuff and no aspect of the market and K2’s plans is left uncovered. It’s also delivered at an almost breathless pace and with great rapport between the Bob, David and this interviewer. If you want to get well ahead of emerging trends in the fast-developing MGA world, this is absolutely essential listening. NOTES: Bob speaks first. The abbreviation LOC snuck in. It means a Letter of Credit. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/

Today’s guest is Andrew Horton Group CEO of QBE insurance. His job is to run a global insurer and reinsurer that writes over $20bn in gross premium that originates from almost every market in the world. The business has just posted a very solid set of results and at the same time issued guidance for this good run to continue in 2023. Andrew has been in post for around 18 months and in this podcast it becomes clear that he has had enough time in charge to start to execute some of his own vision. It’s not wholesale change, but it is quietly radical. QBE has been built and integrated by his predecessors over the last 20 years, so the job today is not about filling in gaps with acquisitions. The group is already global and hugely diversified. Today’s job is about optimising the business’s global processes, product and people to create a consistently profitable, and innovative firm that can continue to grow organically. This is clearly easier said than done, particularly in a business run as three divisions and present in almost every time zone on the planet. And that is the core of the interview today. Andrew is a very thoughtful and very accessible leader. His ideas on how to make a large global business more cohesive, coherent and consistent while at the same time being fast-paced, nimble and efficient are extremely valuable. He is trying to bring a small enterprise mindset to a huge global insurance group and that is a radical goal to try and pursue. From today’s talk I wouldn’t bet against him. I can highly recommend a close listen. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/

Welcome to a very special episode because today’s guests are MGA royalty. Luis Muñoz-Rojas (pictured left) is the founder and Richard Clapham (right) is the CEO of the global MGA DUAL Group, which is part of the Howden Group. DUAL is now a business that writes more than $3bn in premium and employs 1,300 people in 19 countries. And the firm is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Luis and I have a bit of history – in the 1990s we both worked for the biggest broker in Spain, Gil y Carvajal. Aon took over Gil y Carvajal in 1998. For me that was the cue to change career and go off and become a journalist, but for Luis it fired the starting pistol on an incredible entrepreneurial journey with a friendly London wholesale broker called David Howden. I’ll let Luis tell the full story later on. But I don’t want you to think that this is a backward-looking podcast, celebrating the achievements of the past quarter century. There’s a bit of the origin story, because it’s a remarkable one. But this is just as much about the here and now of the reality of today’s market and the direction that DUAL and the MGA sector will head in in the next 25 years. Nothing is off the agenda. 25 years ago MGAs were absolutely not in fashion. But today we seem to be on the third or fourth wave of a revolution in how commercial insurance is underwritten and distributed where MGAs always seem to be at the cutting edge. Who better to be our guides than today’s guests? They have built a global insurance underwriting and distribution machine that can bring geographical and product diversification to even some of the largest carriers, and from the tone of this talk, it feels like they have only just got started. You be the judge, but because I’ve known one of the subjects so long I also think it allows us to have a much more open, candid and fun conversation that we might otherwise have had. NOTES: Luis mentions the DGS. The DGS is the Dirección General de Seguros, the Spanish insurance regulator. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/

Sometimes CEOs can be a little evasive. Of course they’re nowhere near as evasive as politicians, but, particularly if they are the CEO of a public company, they do have to be quite careful what they say to journalists. That can make interviews with them a little unengaging. All this makes today’s guest a real breath of fresh air. SiriusPoint’s various twists and turns in strategy and changes in senior management have made it a little hard to follow in the last couple of years. Was the firm a hedge fund reinsurer or was it a hybrid venture capital-style incubator and investor? Or was it actually a fairly traditional international specialist insurance and reinsurance business? In the past it may well have been all three of these and more, all at once. But Scott Egan is here to do something about all of that. Relatively quickly into the role he has acted decisively and communicated very clearly what his plan for the business is going forward. This podcast lays everything out really concisely. Scott let me ask all the questions I wanted to ask and answered them all very clearly where he could. So if you’ve been scratching your head about what Siriuspoint’s strategy has been all about, allow 35 minutes of Scott’s straight talking to make things clear. Scott’s incredibly direct and engaging and his communication couldn’t be more plain. It’s disarming and refreshing and I highly recommend a listen. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/

Today’s guest is returning to the show after a 2-year gap. For most that would be a reasonable time difference between appearances on the podcast, but today it’s different because Greg Hendrick is the CEO of the start-up Vantage Risk and two years in the lifetime of a company that is less than 3 years old is practically a lifetime. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do and this episode sets everything straight at a really fine pace. Greg has always been confident and accomplished in his encounters with the media and this meeting is another vintage performance. Nothing is off menu and we rattle through where the firm feels it is performing against its original business plan and the big strategic calls Vantage has made, particularly on property cat. We examine some of the early fruits of the group’s big bet on the application of data analysis and technology in core underwriting decisions and also look at how the hard reinsurance market is affecting the insurance market and Vantage’s own development plans. We also discuss possible medium-term avenues for the firm’s original investors and the Group’s attitude to M&A. Vantage is likely to push through a billion dollars of gross written premium in 2023 and is starting to get up onto the plane as Greg would describe it. Greg himself is always on the plane and this is an energising and fun encounter that will get you right inside the mind of one our sector’s biggest thinkers and most dynamic actors. I highly recommend a listen. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/  

One of life’s great paradoxes is that when something is so core to everything that you do that you can’t imagine being able to do your job without it, that’s often when take it a little for granted. And I think that’s what the insurance industry is guilty of when we think of loss adjusters and other trusted third party claims professionals. That’s why I’m delighted I was able to have such an in-depth and probing conversation with Andrew Bart CEO of International Operations at Crawford and Company. It’s clear after our meeting that while many in the sector will regard Crawford’s services as a given and a constant, Crawford itself does anything but. This may be a market-leading business with a very strong position globally, but it is constantly challenging, reinventing and disrupting itself as the world develops. For instance, how does an adjuster scale up and scale down flexibly in the face of ever more frequent, severe and global loss events? And what about when these events occur simultaneously at different points in the world? How does an adjuster rise to the challenge of new developments like parametric insurance, the huge increase in intangible assets and social phenomena like the gig economy? And how about resurgent inflation and the mega-trend of ESG and the transition to net zero which is going to change fundamentally how insurers and their customers deal with all claims in the future? Well, the answers are all here. And they involve a huge amount of technology and data and an enormous amount of collaboration as well as a subtle shift in focus from hindsight and learning historical lessons to foresight, prediction, prevention and prescriptive actions. You may not have thought of all these things, but I can assure that Andrew has very deeply. The result is a fascinating podcast that will give you a clear idea of what the third part claims professionals of the future are going to look like. And I think that after this you won’t take loss adjusters for granted ever again.