The Voice of Insurance

In today’s Episode we are getting to grips with all the key questions surrounding the hugely important issue of exposure management and modelling in our sector.

Models are a core part of our business, but as we have come to rely more and more heavily on their output, many fundamental questions arise.

For instance, how much of a worry should it be that the market is dominated by two very large players?

Or do enough C-suite executives really understand how models work or know the right questions to ask of their exposure management teams?

And are we any closer to finding efficient cross-industry ways of making sure that the exposure data upon which our modelling is based is accurate and easily transferable in digital form?

To assist me in this task are three people with vast experience in attacking these questions from all angles.

Emma Watkins is Head of Exposure Management & Aggregation at Lloyd's and as such has oversight of one of the largest combined books of business anywhere in the world.

Rupert Atkin is an underwriting veteran who has had a long and illustrious career. The Former CEO of Lloyd’s Underwriter Talbot is also a former Deputy Chair of Lloyd’s and Chair of the Lloyd’s Market Association.

Rupert currently serves on multiple boards, including as Chairman of Lloyd’s businesses Ark Managing Agency and Carbon Underwriting as well as a Director at brokers AmWins Group and Alwen Hough Johnson.

Finally Dickie Whitaker is the founder and CEO of the not-for-profit open source modelling platform, the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework.

Dickie can trace his long career back to the foundation of cat modelling firm Eqecat and also spent over a decade in senior roles at reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter. Most recently he founded the open peer-reviewed Journal of Catastrophe Risk and Resilience.

It’s clear our panel is well qualified for the job, but what I enjoyed most about this gathering was the ease and good humour with which my guests took on the subjects in hand.

This could have been a dry and academic affair, but it was absolutely nothing like that. The conversation is lively and positively buzzes with energy.

NOTES:
Oasis LMF has produced a fascinating report Navigating the Storm that makes a great accompaniment to this podcast.

Download it Here

TRANSCRIPT HERE

With a career spanning more than 30 years, today’s guest is a senior executive who has the London insurance market well and truly in his blood.

John Fowle has changed employer since his last appearance on this podcast just under three years ago and with a year under his belt as CEO of Atrium Underwriters, now seemed the perfect time to get him back on the show.

Atrium is a Lloyd’s blue-chip performer, respected in the market for its agility and underwriting skill across the cycle, and ability to punch well above its weight.

As Lloyd’s and Atrium are experiencing some of the best market conditions and underwriting results in their histories, this was a meeting with an executive at a business with great prospects in a market that is openly supportive to growth and innovation.

With the world effectively Atrium’s oyster, there are many doors and options currently open to this carrier.

With so many potential choices available, the conversation that follows reveals a lot about John and Atrium’s singular view of the insurance world – a view that has stood them both in good stead over the last 30 years.

We talk about the prospects for pricing and continued business flow into the London Market, a new-found maturity over collaboration, smart distribution and innovation and get specific updates on some of the classes in which Atrium is recognised as a leader.

John is a straight-talking guest who doesn’t duck any of my more sensitive questions, but for me it’s his deep understanding of how the market fits together and what it does best, coupled with a senior manager’s knowledge of how to get the best out of high-performing underwriters that really shines through this Episode.

Listen on and I think you’ll see what I mean.

LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:

https://www.advantagego.com

We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. They are advertising their new London-based event, Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector.

It’s on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Get 20% off using the code ‘voice’ when you sign up Here

Beazley is a carrier that is synonymous with expertise in the Cyber insurance line and today we are going to get a masterclass in the Cyber threat and how to deal with it from all angles.

We’re going to look at how that cyber threat is evolving, and how Cyber criminals are modifying their methods of attack in the face of an increasingly sophisticated line of defence from companies and Government agencies around the world.

We’ll look at the new threats coming in the age of Artificial Intelligence and - in a world where the CrowdStrike event has reminded us that not all threats necessarily need to be malicious to have a global impact – more mundane problems

A decade ago cyber insurers may have partnered with third party service providers, such as threat monitors and security consultants.

These days the best cyber insurers are bringing those services in-house and offering a holistic offering to their customers, one where everyone’s interests are fully aligned to the best outcomes for all concerned.

In this podcast we will see how this is fundamentally changing the traditional relationship between insurers and their customers.

You don’t have to be a Cyber expert to benefit from a listen to this podcast – indeed, as the Cyber world encroaches more and more on every aspect of our daily lives and companies become aware that Cyber threats directly affect the core of their businesses in all respects, being an avowed techie is less and less important.

These days the best CEOs and CFOs are increasingly aware that a Cyber attack could be an existential threat to their company and that this is clearly not a matter to be left to the IT department to handle alone.

To help us cover this subject from all possible angles, I have been lucky enough to interview four diverse experts from within the wider Beazley business:

They are: Fran Donoso, Chief Technology Officer of Beazley Security, Sydonie Williams, Beazley’s Cyber & Tech Focus Group Leader for the rest of the world, Raf Sanchez – Head of Cyber Services at Beazley Security and Cyber Security Consultant, Alex Creswell.

NOTES:
I highly recommend you download Beazley’s latest Cyber Tech Risk Report.

It’s called Spotlight On Cyber & Technology Risk 2024 - Resilience in a Game-changing environment and it makes a perfect accompaniment to this podcast.

Today’s episode is a real treat. With all Voice of Insurance podcasts the aim is to be able to get to a level of comfort and ease with a guest so that what we end up hearing is as close you can get to listening in on a lively conversation between two good insurance market friends in a bar.

This week I think we managed it and that’s down to my guest, Nick Line, the Chief Underwriting Officer of Markel International.

Nick has had a fascinating career, almost all of it at Markel and one of the forerunner companies that it acquired to make its entry into the London Market in the late 1990s.

Nick has been through markets hard and soft as well as reserving cycles plump with redundancy followed by equal and opposite inverse periods of insufficiency and strengthening.

You could say he has seen most things – and he also seen those phenomena through different lenses as he started his career as an actuary and only more recently took a more public-facing role.

Nick’s story is Markel International’s story too- as well as that of the evolving London and wider international insurance markets over the last 30 years.

As the market has become more technically sophisticated and reserving, pricing, capital and risk have to be measured and controlled, it has become perfectly logical that a CUO might not necessarily be someone who has written a risk in anger themselves

We cover quite a bit of history but it is the forward-looking parts of this podcast that are the most rewarding because Nick combines all the technical smarts one would expect from an actuary with the communication skills of the best CEOs.

His is a vision of the tech-and-data-empowered underwriter and global insurance market of the future, but one where the magic always still happens at the behest of a human insurance professional.

Markel International has grown quickly in the hard market of the last few years and this podcast is a record of a business that has found a groove and is firing on all cylinders.

We made this recording in Markel’s London office only aided by coffee, tea and water with no beer or wine anywhere to be seen.
But by the end it’s almost as if the champagne were flowing as tongues and jaws were loosened and expansive ideas were unleashed on the world.

This makes for a fun listen that is brimming with smart observations and interesting takes from Nick.

I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series. This week they are advertising their successful TINtech London Market event, which will be happening on 4th February 2025.

But before then Data Jam, which is focused on exploring the implications and opportunities of data, analytics, AI and automation in the insurance sector, takes place on 28th November at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London EC3. I’m going to be there.
Get 20% off using the code ‘voice’ when you sign up Here

Welcome to the third instalment of the podcast where I use the annual Monte Carlo RendezVous to gauge the outlook ahead of the key 1.1 Reinsurance renewals.

This year, a lot had changed in the preceding 12 months. 2023 results had been almost universally excellent for all reinsurers and capital had returned to very healthy levels.

Colour and confidence were visibly returning to the market.

Smiles and receptive ears were in far greater supply than a year previously and the grim mood of two years ago had been almost completely forgotten.

The only flies in the ointment were continued emergence of poor back year performance in some US casualty classes and a hesitancy among investors who still seemed more ready to punish any bad news, than reward the good.

Whatever had been black and white two years ago was becoming progressively greyer and choice and options over what - and how and in what shape or size reinsurance could be bought - were beginning to open up for cedants.

In short this is a market of nuances and one where experienced traders are going to be given an opportunity to shine.

So join me as I root them out from either side of the underwriting desk and find out what’s going on.

My promise to you is that if you weren’t lucky enough to be down on the Cote D’Azur in early September, listening to this podcast will be the next best thing to having been there in person, in the rooms, suites, cafés, restaurants and lobbies with me as I interrogate a large number of key industry personnel.
Give me the next hour and I’ll give you the State of (Re)insurance.

NOTES:

GL = General Liability

LINKS:

We thank our sponsor Stephens Rickard:
www.stephensrickard.com