Today’s guest has quickly shown himself to be one of the industry’s most accomplished leaders. When he took over at SiriusPoint just over 18 months ago he gave the business a clear but tough turnaround plan that he executed quickly. Now just coming through the other side of a remarkable change in fortunes, he is brimming with confidence and ambition to move the business he runs further up the performance percentiles. Scott is a very strong communicator and the next forty minutes are packed with very specific ideas, strategies and clear direction. With someone like Scott, you get the impression ..read more

Today’s podcast is a real tour de force with the founding CEO of a maturing Lloyd’s market business that is starting to come into its own in its eleventh year of trading. Fresh from a takeover by blue-chip private equity investor CVC and now boasting a sub-90 percent combined ratio and $450mn in capacity for 2024, Duncan Dale, CEO of Dale Underwriting Partners, is full of confidence and is excited about the opportunities that the Market is currently throwing up for his firm. In many ways Dale Underwriting partners is a microcosm of the Lloyd’s of the last ten years. The market of the twenty-te ..read more

How do you get big, globally diversified insurance companies to innovate? It’s something that we all know is way easier said than done. That’s what today’s podcast is really all about. Today I’m joined by two senior executives who are working together to implement change, improve efficiency and do new things at global insurer QBE. Global Head of Cyber Serene Davis has been tasked with creating a global offering for cyber at QBE, where up to now development has been patchy, with different strategies playing out in various markets across the world. And CEO of QBE Ventures James Orchard runs ..read more

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 She ..read more

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 det ..read more

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 ..read more

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 to ..read more

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 qualit ..read more

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 challen ..read more

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 ..read more