Эпизоды
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Today we’re doing something completely different. We are going to try to look into the future.In this Episode none of the people we are going to talk to are senior insurance leaders. But they might be the insurance leaders of the future. We in insurance know that we’re not likely to be at the top of young people's wish lists when it comes to a future career. But it’s only recently, as we have focused more on talent gaps, that we have started to do something about remedying this problem.That’s where today’s episode comes in. There is a wonderful talent accelerator called Startup Sherpas that goes out and engages with young people via paid work experience cohorts that are funded by industry. These projects, which take a hundred young people each, are called Supersquads.Last summer Allianz, Aviva and the London Market Group (the LMG) sponsored one of these Supersquads and three of today’s guests are graduates of that scheme. Startup Sherpas calls them Sherpees.In that project the Sherpees were asked to come up with ideas to help the Insurance sector better get the attention of young people and make them more likely to think about a career in insurance. The Sherpees came up with a huge number of ideas and these were whittled down to the best, three of which you’re going to hear about today from their creators. Howden Ventures and its insurer innovation partners are sponsoring the next Supersquad and it was the Head of Howden Ventures and recent Voice of Insurance guest, Tom Hoad who was the person who got me involved. Today’s recording happened in the Lloyd’s Lab at a live event I chaired in which the Sherpees pitched their idea to an audience of industry people. I grabbed five minutes with the presenters Chelsea Abili (Bottom left), Amaan Patel (Top Left) and Funta Olenrewaju (Top Right) just before they went on stage. But first I spoke to Dan Wyllie (Bottom Right) Managing Director & Chief Operating Officer at Startup Sherpas to set the scene LINKS: https://startupsherpas.org/Here’s the report that came out of the first Supersquad:https://startupsherpas.org/register-interest-insurance-time-machine-report-2023We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/
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Greg Hendrick is a dream guest. He’s smart, incredibly knowledgeable and experienced, but also really easy and fun to talk to. He’s also still only in the fourth year of building out a major insurer, reinsurer and capital markets partner completely from scratch. For Greg and Vantage Risk, time moves a lot faster and experience is accelerated and compressed compared to the rest of us. There’s a huge amount to talk about and that’s why I was delighted to be able to spend so much time talking to him again. Here we catch up on how Greg’s strategy has evolved against plan and get into great detail about the state of the market all the way across the insurance value chain. But I’m glad we also spend a lot of time looking at how technology is shaping the future of underwriting and completely re-organising the way that we all work and interact with our colleagues day to day. After all, not many people get to the chance use all their experience to design a whole new business from scratch following a contemporary Blueprint with no legacy issues to deal with. Greg sounds like he’s really enjoying this opportunity and I think you’ll enjoy it too. NOTES:Greg mentions a Dinos. That is of course Dinos Iordanou, Vantage Risk’s non-executive Chairman.LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/
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Пропущенные эпизоды?
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Today’s guest has one of the biggest jobs in the London Market.Kate Markham is CEO of Hiscox London Market and the last time we spoke she had just brought her business unit through a remediation strategy that was beginning to bear fruit.Eighteen months later, and the results have been stellar. Today the best are looking to invest and grow and get out on the front foot and lean into the opportunities that a still very strong market has to offer. And this podcast is all about that. This is a business very much looking to the future.Our conversation came about because Hiscox has been one of the first to experiment with artificial intelligence to help speed up and enhance the lead underwriting process and so I wanted to dig right into the detail of what Kate and her teams had done and what the results had been like. So we spend much of this discussion going deep into this and examining where the next steps are going to lead. It’s a very heartening and positive message. Underwriters aren’t going to be out of a job because they will be freed up to add real value in the assessment of risk and to enhance the service that they give brokers and innovate to improve the relevance and quality of the cover that can give their ultimate customers.The emergence of a fully connected digital value chains is also going to make it much easier for a much larger share of world business to access the London Market. After all if underwriters make it really simple to send something to London, and turnarounds are almost instant, why wouldn’t many more brokers seek quotes?Kate is full of energy and enthusiasm and our conversation is fun and rattles along at a fast pace.Kate is also one of those leaders who has the gift of instilling confidence in the people they come in contact with and this podcast put a spring in my step about the quality of the London Market’s future if it can grasp the unique opportunities it is currently presented withI got a lot out of this chat and I think you will too.NOTES:I let the abbreviation D&F get through. It stands for Direct and Facultative and is big-ticket property business.
LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/
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Today’s guest is one of the most remarkable and exceptional people I have had on the show. Guillaume Bonnissent is the CEO of Quotech, a business he founded just over four years ago. With over 20 years in underwriting Guillaume can boast one of the most eclectic resumés of any of his peers.He’s written almost every class going, via almost every distribution channel in the insurance value chain, spanning specialist insurance, treaty reinsurance, portfolio underwriting and an MGA. This gives him a unique perspective on the needs of underwriters of all shapes and sizes, and indeed brokers too.But the really remarkable bit is that he has always been a technologist. He learned coding as part of a business degree and has kept his skills up to date. This meant that when in his last role he was looking for some software that it turned out didn’t exist, he was able to write a prototype version of what he needed himself. The tool worked and he quickly saw the potential for a new software business and Quotech was born. It’s a remarkable story which is really all about giving teams everything they need to do their jobs better. It’s a very rare story of software made by an underwriter for underwriters.In this podcast we’ll certainly learn all about Guillaume’s original inventions, which are being adopted by some very influential market businesses, but we’ll also have a really deep and far-ranging discussion about the long-term consequences of digitisation and artificial intelligence on the insurance value chain.Guillaume is a real London Market original and I found it really easy and fun to talk to him. Listen on and I think you will find it as enlightening and enjoyable as I did.LINKSQuotech https://quotech.io/
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Most of my interviewees are good at using insurance to solve problems, but today’s guests Natalia Dorfman and James Kench of Lloyd’s Lab Alumnus Kita are taking this to a whole new level. This is because the problem Kita wants to help solve is what most would say is the biggest of our generation: Climate change.Kita’s still going to do this by solving client problems and making underwriting profits but it is inventing a whole new class of insurance to do so. Carbon credits are key to the world hitting its 2050 net zero targets, but as a major and highly valuable asset they need high quality insurance to be able to scale up at the speed that is needed if a meaningful positive climate impact is to be made.If we think of a carbon credit in its simplest terms as a physical asset like a forest that has been planted to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, the amount of things that could go wrong is enormous.The trees could burn down or blow over or die from drought, pests or disease. The grower might go bust or run off with your money and not plant anything. Your carbon credit could be nationalised by a foreign government, or it could be wiped out by a change in the methodologies of those who calculate these things or it could just turn out that the trees you have planted might not sequester as much carbon as expected.There’s a lot of moving parts and my example is the simplest of many increasing complex and technical solutions. If we are to make a big dent in climate change we are going to need to scale a currently tiny industry many hundred times so that it grows as big as the Oil and Gas sector is today. That’s where the multiplying effect of insurance comes in. If a project is insured, a fund might be able to buy into three projects instead of one and a bank will be able to lend much more using the same amount of capital. By finding out what could go wrong the hard way Insurance also helps spread best practice and adds another layer of due diligence. Whichever way you look at it, what Natalia and James are building is one of the most exciting new classes of insurance to emerge since cyber. And it’s the good kind – insurance with a strong moral purpose, so any profits can come guilt-free.Natalia and James are really impressive and I think you’ll find this podcast informative and inspiring. Half and hour with these two and you’ll have a spring in your step and you’ll be recommending a career in insurance to every young person that you meet.NOTES:Here’s the link to the report we mention. This is well worth a read: https://resources.oxbowpartners.com/hubfs/202402%20Kita%20%20Oxbow%20Partners%20-%20Gross%20Written%20Carbon%20Report%20(05.02.24).pdfNatalia and James can be contacted at https://www.kita.earth/LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/
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Today’s guest has just taken over the running of a reinsurance business that, like many other in the sector has been right-sizing and re-focusing its underwriting over the past few years. But now Renaud Guidée and AXA XL Re are clearly out the other side and are looking to grow from their $2.5bn global premium base.In this podcast we focus on the state of the reinsurance market, Renaud’s plans for the business as well as the question of how this reinsurer fits in strategically at one of the world’s largest insurance groups.With executive experience in investment banking and with a challenging AXA Group role already under his belt, Renaud brings a refreshingly broad perspective to our conversation. Renaud combines high intelligence with great charm and you’ll learn a lot from time spent in his company.LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/
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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 questionsare 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/
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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/
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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 GroupPlease contact them on: [email protected]
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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 GroupPlease contact them on: [email protected]
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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.
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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 GroupPlease contact them on: [email protected]
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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 philosophyHere 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.NOTESAdrian 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 GroupPlease contact them on: [email protected]
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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.NOTESHere are links to the reports and commentary I mentioned:Howden Tiger - A New Worldhttps://www.howdengroupholdings.com/sites/g/files/mwfley1156/files/2023-12/a-new-world-2024.pdfGallagher Re – What a Difference a Year Makeshttps://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 Capitalhttps://www.guycarp.com/company/news-and-events/news/press-releases/january-2024-renewals.htmlDavid 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/ABBREVIATIONSWACC = Weighted Average Cost of CapitalTIV = Total Insured Values
SPONSORWe thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/
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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 SourcingLINKS:https://viprsolutions.com/
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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 GroupPlease contact them on: [email protected]
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We tend to take the institutions that serve our industry for granted. It almost seems that the hundreds of industry trade and standards bodies have always been there. So that’s why this episode is so interesting. Today’s guest is working on setting up the world’s first cyber loss classificatory body that from 1.1.2024 will serve the UK insurance and reinsurance industry and the wider UK society that it is supporting. We don’t do this very often so my chat with James Burns, Head of Cyber Strategy at UK-headquartered cyber and specialist MGA CFC is a unique chance to be in on the ground floor as an industry leader seeks to solve an emerging problem in the risk landscape. The cyber world and its insurers need be able to classify the severity of the systemic loss events that it is facing if they going to be able to continue to grow and fufill the needs of customers and society as a whole. But just how do you go about creating a pan-industry pan-societal body with a mission to work in the best interests of all? James’s answers to this question are fascinating. His expertise and gravitas, mixed with optimism and idealism are a highly effective and infectious combination.So if you are feeling jaded and thinking that what insurance does is sometimes a little uninspiring I can highly recommend a listen. This is an Episode to remind you that our industry is absolutely essential for solving some of the biggest problems of our age.LINKS:
The Cyber Monitoring Centre doesn't have a website yetBut James is happy to be contacted by anyone looking to get involved. Here is a link to a very well-circulated article he posted to LinkedIn. You can connect to him via his profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/solving-systemic-risk-cyber-markets-number-one-priority-james-burns%3FtrackingId=poupsOrSSTOlgB8stV6E4g%253D%253D/?trackingId=poupsOrSSTOlgB8stV6E4g%3D%3Dhttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/solving-systemic-risk-cyber-markets-number-one-priority-james-burns%3FtrackingId=FADb4wFXTYaPoFKgLIEjHw%253D%253D/?trackingId=FADb4wFXTYaPoFKgLIEjHw%3D%3DWe thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/We also thank our audio advertiser, Aventum GroupPlease contact them on: [email protected]
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Today’s guest is a well-known and respected senior underwriter with a career going back forty years.Simon Bird, Group Executive Underwriter and Active Underwriter of Brit Insurance’s Syndicate 2988, is someone who I’d heard of thirty years ago when I was a broker, but I only ended up meeting him twenty-nine years later. Regular listeners will have heard his wise contributions to the last two Monte Carlo State of Insurance and Reinsurance episodes. The rushed timetable of Monte Carlo made me wish that we could have a longer and more relaxed meeting to be able have far more detailed and nuanced conversation. And here it is. This is another vintage episode with someone who has spent a generation leading carriers through markets, variously benign, indifferent, soft, hard and completely dislocated. Very few people can put today’s market and the issues of our times into the kind of context that Simon can. But of course Simon isn’t some kind of museum piece or insurance and reinsurance historian, he is a hands-on underwriting leader who is very much in touch with the market.He is also great company and his insights and thoughts on topics as far-ranging as Ai to the structure of the syndicated insurance marketplace are highly original and valuable and I can highly recommend a listen.LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/We also thank our audio advertiser, Aventum GroupPlease contact them on: [email protected]
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Today’s episode is a real treat. That’s because I’m talking to an underwriter with encyclopaedic knowledge and over thirty-five years in the insurance industry.But what makes this interview special is that I am talking to someone with huge experience but very specifically the opportunity to put all that experience into practice for a second time.Paul Brand was Chief Underwriting Officer at Catlin for almost thirty years.Just under five years ago he founded Convex Stephen Catlin, taking over the CEO role in in the summer of 2022.Convex is proof that there’s nothing like knowing what to do and how to do it to help with speed of execution. It took over 30 years to get Catlin group to a GWP of just under $6bn. As Convex approaches its 5th birthday its likely to surpass $4bn in GWP this calendar year. But listening back, this podcast is really about underwriting. It’s about how to be a good underwriter but more importantly how to build and scale an excellent underwriting business. Paul Brand is someone who has spent most of his career outside the limelight and it’s really enjoyable to witness him moving to the centre stage and making his distinctive voice heard.He’s very considered and thoughtful but at the same time full of dry humour.He’s also incredibly generous with his time and highly tolerant of me and my constant questioning. LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/We also thank our audio advertiser, Aventum GroupPlease contact them on: [email protected]
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Innovation is something we all talk about but something that is notoriously hard to do in insurance. That’s hardly surprising because in our industry we prize and incentivise all the things that are the effective opposite of innovative. We reward stable and predictable when, at least at the beginning, most innovative ventures are likely to be highly volatile and unpredictable. And then we wonder why it’s so hard to bring new ideas to fruition in our sector!To be fair to ourselves, in the past few years insurance has started to invest in people who have the word innovation in their job title and whose performance is measured more on whether they can bring the products of the future to market rather than on their initial loss ratios.Tom Hoad, of is one of this select but growing band. He moved to Howden to set up Howden Ventures, which he describes as a vehicle for professionalising innovation. Here Tom is combining seed and venture funding with distribution and the ability to underwrite through the Howden Group’s DUAL underwriting platform.In this almost breathless podcast Tom is hugely energised at the prospect of having all the tools at his disposal to remove the main roadblocks in start-up insurance business’s paths. This is a lively chat with a real expert in innovation and a master of herding the cats of the market behind a common vision.It’s also an episode that I hope will give you a lot of inspiration and make you feel that the London-based insurance ecosystem is in rude good health and highly likely to be the crucible in which many of the insurance products of the future are going to be forged.NOTES:I mentioned I would link to Tom’s first podcast with The Voice of Insurance. Episode 124 is here: https://thevoiceofinsurance.podbean.com/e/ep-124-tom-hoad-innovation-is-really-about-doing-stuff/I also mentioned an episode earlier in the year with DUAL:https://thevoiceofinsurance.podbean.com/e/ep163-richard-clapham-luis-munoz-rojas-of-dual-group-get-the-ham-not-just-the-bone/Tom mentions a Julia at Airmic. Airmic is the UK’s Risk Management trade body and Julia is Julia Graham, its CEO.LINKSWe thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/
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