The Voice of Insurance

Today’s guest is a bit of a coup for the Voice of Insurance. He is the CEO of a $13bn top 10 reinsurance and specialty insurance group that spans the full length of the insurance value chain. Yet despite being a public company of great scale, until now it hasn’t had much of a public profile. It’s previous CEOs were notoriously publicity-shy but that’s about to change. Juan Andrade has been in post...

Today’s episode is a real cracker and part of a series of great episodes we’ve got lined up for you in the month of September. Laurent Rousseau is the Deputy CEO of Scor Global P&C and is a rising star in this top-tier global reinsurer. In this podcast we talk about the dilemma facing Lloyd’s of London, Covid effects, the Insurtech phenomenon in the era of the now publicly quoted Lemonade, the int...

Today’s episode is all about another syndicate in a box. Back in episode 16 I interviewed Stuart Newcombe, the active underwriter of the Munich Re innovation Syndicate 1840 and the discussion was all about technology and the implementation of pioneering concepts such as parametric products. This episode is also about the application of technology but this time it is being applied to one of the mos...

Today’s guest is an executive with a big job to do. The broad market turn, driving improved performance, tidying up back years and dealing Covid-19 are enough for most executives, but on top of all that this new leader’s company has had the fallout from an acrimonious public dispute with an activist investor to deal with. As part of Argo Group’s new management team, Chief Underwriting Officer Tim...

This episode’s guest is a journalist’s dream. He has deep, long and broad industry experience, he is very intelligent, he has very strong and clear opinions about how insurance works and why he is doing what he is doing. More importantly he is never afraid of expressing those opinions and he does so with great enthusiasm and charisma. Even better for us is that he has a new role heading a company...

Today’s episode is all about legacy. Legacy used to be called run-off and run-off conjured up slightly negative connotations of difficult old greyhairs in dusty out of the way offices eking out a dwindling pot of claims until retirement. I used to think that its keenness to rename itself was a sign that it wanted to rehabilitate itself in some way and that the change was merely cosmetic or aesthet...

I always think one of the main missions of the Voice of Insurance is to give you access to industry leaders so you can find out how they think and what they think about the big issues of the day. These are people that you’ve almost certainly heard of but not necessarily heard from. But there is a second mission which is to introduce you to people who you almost certainly don’t know but who I think...

Today’s guest is a broker right at the top of her profession. She is someone industry leaders turn to for advice and assistance around the most fundamental commodity in our industry – capital. Her contacts are superb and if you need support her insight and connections could be the difference between getting what you need and coming up short. Vicky Carter is Guy Carpenter’s Chairman of Global Capit...

I have been watching the development of the intermediary whose executives you’ll meet in this episode since before it was founded back in 1994. Now over a quarter of a century later, a lot of organic growth and a lot of M&A, this business is many thousands of times larger than it was then. It spans much of the globe and is one of the best poised to make the most of the opportunities thrown up by t...

The Aspen story is one that in many ways mirrors the global wholesale specialty insurance and reinsurance markets that we know and love so much. After a few years of relative underperformance – nothing catastrophic or life-threatening but underperformance nonetheless – Aspen now finds itself in the hands of private equity in the form of serial industry investor Apollo. Mark Cloutier is in post to...

In the insurance media we talk about classes of new carriers being formed in mass flowerings of capitalism after the bursting of prolonged soft markets, but we never apply this term to the birth of intermediaries. This is because the distribution side of our industry tends to renew itself more organically and less in dramatic waves. Except that right now the conditions are perfect for a mass expan...

In the wholesale specialty and reinsurance end of the global P&C market we can easily make the mistake of focusing too exclusively on the North American and European markets that make up the lion's share of worldwide premiums. We can easily fall into the error of thinking that hard markets are universal and that whenever the US sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. That’s why It’s great to...

Reinsurance is in a particularly interesting state at the moment. Industry capital has recovered as capital markets have bounced back after decisive actions from central banks around the world and incumbents and a few start-ups have raised or plan to raise new capital. But at the same time the industry has shown stronger underwriting discipline as it seeks to correct a poor run of results and trie...

This episode's guest is the CEO of one of Lloyd’s standout performers of the past two decades. Beazley is a blue-chip Lloyd’s business that has consistently maintained top quartile performance while growing fast and continuing to innovate. Because of this any time in the presence of Andrew Horton is time well spent. In this episode we talk about the hardening market, the world that awaits the Clas...

Not many people have ever been entrusted with hundreds of millions of dollars and the promise of more to come if it is needed with instructions to go an create a brand new broker from scratch. But today’s guest has persuaded blue chip investors to do just that. These investors have also given him the multi-year time horizon he needs to achieve his goals. With a glittering career right at the top o...

Today’s guest brings with him a difficult message for our industry in this Covid 19 crisis Quite simply we’re not doing well enough. We’re not being consistent enough, we are inflexible and some of our decisions are being driven purely by cost and profit considerations. We are too distant from the customer, we are letting small businesses down and are restricting cover going forwards where we shou...

Julian Tighe is the CEO of Asta, the Lloyd’s market’s biggest and best-known turnkey managing agency. Turnkeys are firms that incubate fledgling Lloyd’s businesses, helping them learn the ropes before they stand in their own right Because of that anyone looking to enter the Lloyd’s market is very likely to have met with him or people from his organisation before taking their idea any further. That...

One of the main aims of this podcast is to introduce you to some of the exceptional people I have been lucky enough to meet during the course of my work as an insurance journalist. Some are not the CEOs and public-facing executives, but the strategic visionaries and innovators who work behind the scenes doing extraordinary things. Today’s guest is just one such character. Oliver Schofield has had...

Dennis Mahoney is a broking industry legend. A consummate intermediary and negotiator he rose to be a trusted councillor at the top of the global broking world and right at the peak of the Aon chain of command. Since relocating to Bermuda he has taken on a wider range of executive and non-executive roles. The latest of these saw him steady the ship at independent London -based wholesale and reinsu...

Tim Gardner is the relatively new CEO of Lockton Re and has been tasked by the Lockton group with building up a challenger reinsurance broking operation of significant scale. The MMC-JLT and now Aon-Willis M&A activity has given this venture a significant timing boost and there is a palpable sense of a once in a generation opportunity for independents to stake their claim on a share of this lucrat...

I spoke to Managing Director of QBE Re Stephen Postlewhite about hardening rates at the mid-year renewals, capital crunches, squeezes in ILS and retro and the long-term insurability of pandemic risk. I also asked him about what might change at QBE Re now that the former actuary and Aspen executive has taken the reins. I found someone freshly reloaded with capital and risk appetite and full of expa...

We live in incredibly uncertain times and its at times like this that we value clarity above all else. My interviewee in this episode makes himself crystal clear. Julian Enoizi is the CEO of the UK’s government backed terrorism insurance mutual Pool Re. Born hastily as a response to the successful mainland UK bombing campaign of the IRA 27 years ago, it has since evolved into a far more sophistica...

I first met this episode’s interviewee in the queue for a Latin American treaty underwriter back in 1993 and have been interviewing him as an insurance journalist since 2005. It probably shows in this encounter. Jason Howard, CEO of Beach & Associates is a great person to talk to. He has had a long career as a business leader and more importantly he is a big personality who always says exactly wha...

In this wide-ranging debate we cover the the economic, asset-side, risk-side, pricing dynamics and psychological effects of Covid-19 on the reinsurance market, guided by  Willis Re's recent report . Andrew Newman, President, and Printhan Sothinathan, Co-Head of Global Analytics, at Willis Re are two very smart, very senior and very engaging figures. The report is the most comprehensive and far-sig...

The second in our series of special Covid 19 episodes brings together a trio of trade body Chief Executives: Steve White of the British Insurance Brokers Association (Biba), Clare Lebecq of the London Market Group (LMG) and Christopher Croft of the London and International Insurance Brokers Association (Liiba). These heavyweight trade body leaders debated the UK insurance industry’s Public relatio...