The Voice of Insurance

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 w...

Given the nature of the people I talk to on this show, it’s fair to say that most of my guests are moving pretty fast. Well, in a fast-paced industry today’s guest someone who is moving noticeably faster than others. Nick Cook of BMS Group has trebled the size of this broking business in four years. And BMS has just completed a major refinancing deal that will enable it to go even faster. In this...

Today’s guest runs a business that has been a cornerstone of the Lloyd’s market for a generation and has a pedigree that stretches a long way further back than that. Alistair Wood is the CEO of Hampden Capital and also Hampden Agencies, the largest of the Lloyd’s Members’ Agents, with over £2 billion in funds under management. Because Hampden is a dedicated investor into Lloyd’s there is no-one be...

Normally I interview well-known senior executives in the global insurance industry, often with long and distinguished track records and a public persona within our sector, but today I’m talking to two people who I would expect only a few of the regular Voice of Insurance listeners to know. They’re here because I think what they have achieved to date is interesting and genuinely unique and deserves...

Cyber is rightly never far from the news. It’s a class of business that’s only 15 years old, but is already producing annual income in the billions of dollars for many insurers and reinsurers. Today’s guest is Paul Bantick, Global Head of Cyber Risks at Beazley Beazley’s gross cyber income was already well over a billion dollars in 2022 and is still growing strongly into this year on the back of s...

Often when we go to a conference a CEO will pop up to give us an inspiring pep talk about how nothing good in the world happens without insurance and how our industry is one with a genuinely useful moral purpose that has a positive effect on everything that it touches. We may nod along and then think little more of it. But today’s guest is living proof that those CEOs are right to feel inspired. T...

This Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous was very different from last year’s. Last year it was all about reinsurers and brokers getting the clearest message possible across to buyers that the market was going to re-set in a major way at the first of January 2023. That made it pretty straightforward to report upon – for me or anyone listening to last year’s inaugural reinsurance documentary episode the message...

The Voice of Insurance podcast was very much made with guests like Richard Brindle in mind. A lot of people talk about being independent, but very few live it in the way today’s guest has done. And by that I mean independence of mind, thought and action, sometimes including independence from your reinsurers. Mr Brindle has always spoken his mind but he has also backed up his strong opinions with e...

I last spoke to today’s guests as part of last year’s The State of Reinsurance Special Episode from Monte Carlo. In that documentary-style podcast I spoke to over 20 people, so a one-on-one with this duo to look more closely at their still relatively young business was long overdue. Tim Gardner (left) and Bob Bisset (right) of Lockton Re have been very busy in the last four years since the project...

Today’s guest is exactly the right person to have on the show at exactly the right time. The reinsurance world is about to head down to Monaco for its annual global Rendez-Vous. So ahead of that, speaking to the CEO of the reinsurer that according to AM Best is now the second largest writer of gross non-life reinsurance premium in the world, producing almost $26bn in P&C top line, has got to b...

Today’s guest is an insurance technology entrepreneur with a great story to tell. Arun Balakrishnan started his career at sea but went back to business school, became an internet entrepreneur and ended up captaining Berkshire Hathaway’s foray into the Indian insurance market. Ten years ago he founded Insurance technology firm Xceedance and the growth has been rapid. But that’s just a bit of backgr...

The older we get the more we lament the passing of the great personalities in the marketplace. Over an after-work drink we tend to reminisce about the entrepreneurial characters of old and how we wish there were more of their kind today. I know I do. Well, today’s guests are proving that this is a myth caused by old age because they are some of the most singular insurance people I have had on the...

Today’s guest is someone pretty unique for our sector because he’s a software engineer who became a senior actuary and then founded his own insurance-focused technology business. Amrit Santhirasenan, Co-founder and CEO at hyperexponential’s story is a classic of the entrepreneurial genre: Frustrated with a lack of an insurance-specific decision-making platform to bring together underwriters, actua...

Today’s guest is someone with a fascinating story to tell. Today Antony Erotocritou is the CEO of Ardonagh Specialty but he has ridden the Ardonagh story all the way from its origins in the debt-for-equity swap for troubled UK retail consolidator Towergate in 2015. Ardonagh has since been on a journey to build its specialty and international operations, which included 2021’s transformational deal...

Today’s guest is someone I should have had on the show a long time ago, but I’m really glad has finally got an episode to himself. Tony Ursano is the Managing Partner and Co-founder of Insurance Advisory Partners and is someone who has been right at the top of deal-making in our industry for more than three decades. With roles at blue-chip firms on Wall Street and at Insurance brokers, he’s one of...

Today’s guests are Paul Templar CEO and Sebastian Prosser, Head of Account Management at insurance technology solutions specialist VIPR. VIPR started out in the London Market 14 years ago. From day one its core offering was to provide a software solution to the endless administrative problem of the ingestion and checking of data in the Delegated Authority (DA) space. With around 40% of the busines...

Today’s guests are Warren Downey Group CEO and Lee Anderson, Group Deputy CEO of UK-headquartered intermediary Specialist Risk Group (SRG). Warren was last on the show as part of two very early Special Episodes that SRG sponsored over three years ago. Back then SRG was just about to get a new private equity backer in the form of HGGC. Since that change of ownership the growth has been impressive,...

Today’s guest is Chris Killourhy, Managing director of QBE Re. The reinsurance market has been through some comprehensive changes in the last 12 months and so has QBE Re. In this podcast we delve right into the evolving appetites and re-vamped strategy at this well-respected medium-sized reinsurer. In the past QBE Re was viewed as a highly competent and nimble trader in the markets in which it ope...

Asta is the largest third-party manager of Lloyd’s Syndicates by quite a long way. As such, today’s guest Lorraine Harfitt CEO of Asta, almost certainly has a better view of what types of new business entrepreneurs and major insurers alike are looking to set up. She also has the best view of Lloyd’s changing appetites around what type of businesses it is looking to allow into - and keep out of - t...

Today’s guest is someone who has had a career now into its fifth decade and is someone who I have been interviewing on an off for just under 20 years. He has held senior roles in broking businesses, underwriting firms and right in the heart of Lloyd’s. Today Julian James is CEO of Global Markets Commercial P&C Insurance at Sompo International. This is a global role that encompasses everything rela...

Today’s guest is James Drinkwater, the President of Amwins. James is one of the most successful broking entrepreneurs of his generation. But he is also someone who doesn’t give a lot of interviews and so I have been working to get him on the show for quite some time. I am really glad I finally did because this is a really lively and fast-paced interview with someone right at the top of our industr...

It's great to have Clive Washbourn back on the show. The Episode I recorded with him two years ago has been the most downloaded of any so far, so it’s obviously going to be good for business to do a follow-up. But it’s more than that. Clive is one of those people who is famous in the market. He is someone who people tell stories about, so you’ve heard about him even if you haven’t met him. So when...

Given its 50% share of global premiums, it’s probably fair enough that we spend an awful lot of our time talking about the US market, but sometimes it’s refreshing to broaden our horizons a little. So today we’re going to be looking at Australia. And luckily we’re going to be guided by a real expert and pioneer in this territory. This is someone with an enviable track record and also a very strong...

Aegis London is one of the most consistently top performing syndicates in the Lloyd’s market. It’s also one of the least volatile. The business has a new CEO, Alex Powell and so it was only natural that I should invite him onto the show for a catch-up. Alex has been with Aegis since the year 2000 when it was a fledgling syndicate so he knows this firm inside and out – to use his own phrase, he’s b...

Today’s guest is one of the best qualified senior insurance and reinsurance executives I have ever had on the show. That’s because in a forty-plus year career David Cabral has been in both claims and underwriting, crossed the divide between Life and Health and P&C and worked at brokers, both in good times and in very bad times. He’s also been in charge of a company in run-off and he has overseen d...