Today’s guest is making a highly welcome return to the show after a four-year absence. Since we last spoke the fortunes of the market have been transformed, her company has matured and floated successfully on the New York Stock Exchange and has had its Insurer Financial Strength rating upgraded to A by AM Best. All this means that CEO of Hamilton Insurance Group, Pina Albo and I had an awful lot to talk about.And our discussion doesn’t disappoint. Pina is crystal clear in her vision for Hamilton and how it is planning to make the most of the many opportunities it still sees available in today’s marketplace. There’s a refreshing directness and lack of ambiguity in Pina’s delivery that will leave you in no doubt as to what she thinks of the market issues of today, from the prospects for growth in US casualty reinsurance and the long-term trend to delegated and automated underwriting, all the way through to the best applications of AI.It’s a candid chat that’s also often fun.So check in for some valuable time in the company of a global insurance leader who is burnishing her credentials and making the wider market sit up and notice her achievements. LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

At first glance, today’s guest might have an unenviable job. That’s because that job entails trying to find the common ground between the hundreds of Lloyd’s brokers, some of whom are extremely large and very many of whom are very small and very specialist indeed.Christopher Croft, the CEO of the London & International Insurance Brokers’ Association (LIIBA)is someone who I see and meet constantly out in the marketplace, and is someone I have been meaning to get on the podcast for some time. That’s because he’s one of those people that if you didn’t already know, a mutual acquaintance would suggest that you meet.LIIBA is a unique trade body and lobbying group because its membership operates globally and so blends a core remit looking after broker interests in the London Market with an important role representing wholesale specialist brokers on the global stage. And Chris is a unique character – he is technically and intellectually very strong but combines this with a down-to-earth good humour and sense of fun that is infectious. In this podcast we focus on the key role that Lloyd’s brokers play in innovation and how this role is often under-appreciated and misunderstood by regulators across the globe.We also get up to speed with all the regulatory goings on and market reform programmes in the UK, Europe and beyond. After a listen you’ll have learned a lot but I think will also have found a friendly new voice banging the drum for the global insurance industry’s pivotal role in the global economy and London’s unique role within it.NOTES:Here’s a Link to obtain the Innovation Imperative Report we mention. The report was produced in association with Insurindex:https://theinsurindex.com/reports/the-innovation-imperative-why-brokers-matter-more-than-ever/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=LIIBAreport2025&utm_content=innovationLINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Todays’ Episode was a joy to make. It was a face-to-face meeting that crackled from the moment my interviewee walked through the door and shook my hand all the way through to a swift exit to a pressing engagement. As I was tidying cables and packing away my microphones into their case, I already knew this was going to be a really strong Episode. Now that I’ve had a listen back for the final run-through I know it to be the case. They say the best leaders embody their businesses and if that is true Howden Re should be absolutely buzzing along because this encounter with that business’s CEO Tim Ronda highlights someone bursting with confidence, smarts, charisma, energy and something else that we don’t see so often – genuine happiness. Tim is clearly enjoying himself in his role. The podcast covers all the issues of the day in the reinsurance market and quite a lot more besides. Discussions about M&A, Casualty, AI and even the competitive reinsurance broking landscape all make an appearance. Also, despite running a reinsurance broker that has reached such a size and scale that it can no longer be referred to as a challenger and is still growing at pace, Tim doesn’t tend to engage that regularly with the media. Given what you are about to hear, I think that’s probably a mistake but I ‘m also grateful that Tim has given The Voice of Insurance an outsized allocation of his rare press time.As the nights draw in I can highly recommend this episode as a warming and energising tonic. It’ll bring you right up to date, put a smile on your face and a spring in your step.LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

I really enjoyed recording today’s episode because both my guests have been on the show before and that always makes getting a conversation going much easier.And to make the session even more lively, we had something really interesting to discuss. Andrew Robinson’s Skyward Specialty has just entered into an agreement to buy David Ibeson’s Apollo. In M&A the parties often talk about a combined entity being more than the sum of its parts and I think that in podcasting terms this is definitely an episode where one CEO plus one CEO equals more than two. Both Andrew and David are strong and unambiguous business leaders and the level of energy, camaraderie and enthusiasm on display here is infectious. For Apollo the deal ends any lingering uncertainty about its long-term ownership and is another reminder of the enduring global attraction of the Lloyd’s platform and for Skyward the deal is a vindication of Andrew’s strategy since taking over what was then Houston International five years ago and transforming it into a premium rated specialty insurer, now quoted on the public markets.There’s a lot of cultural affinity between the two businesses and a similar rapport between these two executives and the next half an hour will absolutely fly by.NOTES: SOX = Sarbanes-Oxley, prominent US Corporate re-regulation of the early 2000’sLINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

This episode is a very special one because, thanks to one of my guests, we are going to hear from somebody who I assumed I had missed my chance of getting to appear on this podcast.Let me explain. Tony Ursano of Insurance Advisory Partners is someone I have interviewed many times over the past 20 years. In fact I first met Tony when he was working at Willis during the thirteen-year reign of our second guest. Tony has recently executed quite a coup – that’s because he has managed to convince industry legend and former Willis CEO Joe Plumeri to come and work with him at Insurance Advisory Partners. I’ll let Joe and Tony do the talking, but I’ll just say you are in for a treat.Many of us in the insurance industry, particularly when we get to a certain age, tend to get nostalgic about an unspecified past era when there were so many more strong characters working in the sector than there are now and then we complain that these days things aren’t quite the same. Well, Joe Plumeri is exactly the kind of person that people my age tend to think of when they make that complaint Of course Joe is a senior executive with a glittering multi-decade career, spanning a broad spectrum of financial services, but he is also a complete original and a natural speaker and great motivator. One of his strongest skills is the ability to express often very complex ideas in simple terms that large numbers of people can quickly comprehend and get behind. He is always original and he is always direct. There are no grey areas. This discussion examines the prospects for M&A and consolidation all the way through the insurance value chain, from carriers of all sizes and specialisms to mega brokers, MGAs and even hybrid carriers.You'll leave this discussion incredibly well informed and in no doubt what Tony and Joe think are going to happen – but there’ll be a little bit extra – you will have met an industry legend and heard his unique perspective along the way.LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

The growth in Hybrid Fronting carriers has been explosive in the past seven years and this growth has both been fuelled by, and has helped feed, a parallel explosion in the formation of MGAs and the rise in commercial insurance distribution outside the Admitted Lines market.Today’s guest is one of the first movers in this relatively novel insurance carrier type and co-founded the business that is now MS Transverse. As such Dave Paulsson is a guest with a unique perspective. Now that the sector is beginning to mature and MS Transverse itself is part of a top 10 global insurance group, this podcast examines what is going to come next in this remarkable growth and transformation story. Unlike most of us, who just one day found ourselves doing insurance in one way or another, Dave came to the sector by looking at it from the outside, spotting a golden opportunity and executing a plan to make the most of that opportunity. That’s what makes him such a refreshing insurance entrepreneur and this podcast a little out of the ordinary. Dave is very smart and is laser-focused on the job in hand, so if you want a clear idea of where the multi-billion-dollar Hybrid carrier boom is heading, then listen on, one of the industry’s best-qualified executives is on hand to guide the way.LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

I often wonder if we in the insurance industry have any idea how lucky we are that there are so many smart people out there looking to help make the way we do business easier, more efficient, more productive and ultimately, more profitable. Today’s guest, Matt Hicks, is one of these people. Matt is the co-founder of Recorder, a next-generation broker management system that connects producers directly with underwriters and gives those underwriters instant quote and bind capabilities. Matt is a serial entrepreneur who has already been involved in two successful fintech ventures and now has some very well-known insurance investors on board this one. The product Matt and his team have produced is laser-focused on what adds the most value in the commercial insurance value chain. It’s all about reducing admin and freeing producers, whether they are brokers, coverholders or frontline underwriters, up to do what they do best. The initial productivity gains claimed are eye-opening.The term serial entrepreneur may give you a misleading impression, so I’d say the best way of describing Matt would be that he would always be the most investable guest on an episode of Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank. By the time he had finished with them, he would have all the investors fighting to be involved. The key I think is that special humility and empathy you get with really successful entrepreneurs. In my time as an insurance journalist I have lost count of the number of entrepreneurs I have met with who have undoubtedly superb technology, but who ultimately failed because they had zero empathy or understanding of how insurance professionals actually work and therefore what help they really need.Matt and his team are in insurance for the long run and know that the sort of API-lead revolution they are proposing will take time. But at the same time they know that history is on their side if they are patient enough. So I can highly recommend a listen. Matt is incredibly easy to talk to and his experienced and down-to-earth approach means he knows exactly how to go about making Recorder the sort of tool that over time the best producers are going to be clamouring for.  LINKS: https://www.recorder.tech/https://www.recorder.tech/contact  

Welcome to a Special Documentary Episode of The Voice of Insurance podcast Produced in association with Stephens RickardThis is the fourth episode of its kind.The first saw a historic, chaotic, dramatic hard market renewal unfold, at the next stability and a return to orderliness was craved - and was granted.Last year animal spirits started to be talked of in hushed tones, but it was too early for anything like a full return.This year the reinsurance industry has its mojo well and truly back.Capital has been fully replenished. Profits are real and there is increasing confidence that they are to a large extent baked in for a time.Surprise multi-billion dollar loss events have been weathered and yet instead of apologising to our investors for poor results we are still set to report and project healthy profits and returns on capital.Profitable growth is still on the agendaThe real questions this year are of a more philosophical nature:Can everyone grow profitably without changing the nature of the market?Is it better to buy or build?Should capital be returned or deployed in M&A?What’s different now, and what’s not?We came to Monaco knowing that reinsurers were likely to have to give a little to get a little, but the question was what and how much were they were prepared to trade in return for a little more of what they really wanted.So join me as I wander the streets, dodge the supercars, cross the squares and elbow my way through the crowded bars and lobbies to meet a representative cross-section of the reinsurance buying and selling public and find out what’s happening in the State of (Re)insurance.RECOMMENDED FURTHER READINGHowden Re's Who Dares Wins report: https://www.howdenre.com/sites/howdenre.howdenprod.com/files/2025-09/Howden_Re_Who%20Dares%20Wins_Report_September_2025_EN_Final.pdf Gallagher Re Half-Year 2025: https://www.ajg.com/gallagherre/-/media/files/gallagher/gallagherre/news-and-insights/2025/september/gallagherre-resinsurance-market-report-hy-2025.pdf Swiss Re sigma 3/2025:https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/sigma-research/sigma-2025-03-property-casualty-growing-stronger-riskier-world.html LINKSWe thank this year's Sponsor, Stephens Rickardhttps://www.stephensrickard.com/

The transformation of major Japanese insurers into genuinely global insurers has been one of the most remarkable long-term changes of the last couple of decades.Today’s guest is an embodiment of that internationalisation. Ken Reilly is CEO of Insurance for Sompo in Asia Pacific but boasts a 30-year international career that has seen him work in New York, London, Bermuda and Tokyo. Ken now splits his time between Singapore and Tokyo because, in addition to his APAC role, he now runs Sompo’s own Japanese commercial insurance division. This is a really interesting encounter because – swayed by the big numbers, we are often guilty of an over intense focus on the North American and European insurance and reinsurance Markets. In this episode I get to talk to someone who knows that world intimately to show me the nuances of the Asia Pacific market through the eyes of a global business that has been in some of those markets for 50 years.Ken is a great guest and this is a very refreshing and enlightening interview. Listen on for the dos and don’t of Asia-Pacific expansion and a lot more besides.LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Every year for the past four years I have been lucky enough to be given time with Richard Brindle at the opening of the Monte Carlo Rendezvous and every year we have had the sort of conversation that helps set the tone for the rest of the gathering and indeed the rest for the calendar year and into the next.This year was no exception. As ever, Richard was forceful, unambiguous and direct on all topics, from the state of the market and the growth opportunities within it to what The Fidelis Partnership has learnt from its experience with the Russia-Ukraine Aviation War losses and the California wildfires. Richard was joined by John-Paul O’Hare, the Fidelis Partnership’s Group Director of Underwriting. As the discussion took flight and encompassed subjects as diverse as the Application of Ai and algorithmic underwriting to the insurance work ethic, service levels and the return to the office, John-Paul held his own.As a result I can highly recommend this episode for an original and uncompromising view on the opportunities and threats facing the global specialty insurance and reinsurance markets in 2026 and beyond.NOTES: Pine Walk has 16 cells signed up, of which 13 are currently active and is expected to write $1.2bn in premium in 2026.LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Successful insurers have always been in the business of gaining a competitive edge in the form of better information and intelligence. Going right back to the days of early marine underwriters funding improved communication between global ports and ship operators, the best players have always made sure they had the clearest possible view of the risk in front of them both, at a granular, individual level and then at the portfolio level. But there’s more to it than that. The most successful underwriters today are now able to do all of their analysis and assessment at the sort of speed that would have been impossible even a decade ago. Because they can cut turnarounds from days to minutes they can hugely increase the number of submissions they can handle and therefore greatly improve their chances of selecting the best and most optimally profitable risks for their portfolios. It’s clear that with the advent of smart underwriting workbenches that enable underwriting teams and their managers to blend multiple information sources and better dissect and digest risk, we are in the middle of a revolution in the way that underwriting is handled. So join me, Ali Shahkarami Head of Risk Data Solutions - Insurance & Public Sector at Swiss Re (pictured, Bottom) and Simon Fagg, Global Head of pre-Sales Solutions at AdvantageGo (pictured, Top) as we explore what the new benchmark for quality underwriting is going to look like in the digital age. The business unit that Ali runs is at the cutting edge of risk information, providing definitive resources such as CatNet to the global market and Simon is an underwriter who has developed his career to become a pre-eminent advocate of the application of technology to the underwriting process. Between these two excellent guests we have all the expertise we need and what follows is lively and enlightening discussion that will leave you in no doubt as to the industry direction of travel and what you need to do to position your business for differentiated growth in the coming years.LINKShttps://www.advantagego.com www.swissre.com

Insurance has a huge amount of specialisms that don’t always cross over, which means that we can go our whole careers as insurance professionals, having a rough idea about what a particular class of business does, but not really ever appreciating the detailed picture.I think Trade Credit is one of those classes and that’s something we should all fix, not least because it’s a product that our clients could probably all benefit from That’s why I’m really glad that an element of this podcast is a really useful primer on the class and that my guest today has one of the biggest single jobs in this line anywhere in the world and has over twenty years’ experience to share with us.Sarah Murrow is President & CEO at Allianz Trade Americas and what follows is a helpful rundown of this global and really useful class of business. This is insurance in its purest and most relevant form – risk taking that allows customers to stick to what they’re best at and also improves their return on capital. This is also a line that provides valuable advice as well as a financial product and is so embedded with its clients that they communicate with it every day. In short all of us in the rest of the P&C world have an awful lot to learn from trade credit. And as prominent Trade Credit insurers begin to appear under the Lloyd’s platform, this is a class we should all be getting to know a little better. Sarah is a great guest and our conversation encompasses themes as broad as global economics and politics as well as the cut and thrust of insuring trade receivable assets. LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Deep down we are all know that innovation isn't just a buzzword; it's really a matter of long-term survival. It is getting increasingly difficult to argue against the idea that the speed of change keeps accelerating and we now live in a world where what was science fiction only 20 years ago could soon become the norm. For instance, who would have guessed that the majority of our growing energy needs are going to be almost entirely met my novel green production methods within the next twenty-five years, perhaps even including scaled up nuclear fusion within the mix? Who would have imagined that commercial exploitation of space would become ever more economically viable, including the possibility of space-based manufacturing and even lunar habitation? In such an environment a failure to innovate means that not only will your company stagnate over time, but better-run, more innovative competitors might take an unassailable lead over you. If innovation is imperative this begs the question of whether there is a way of bottling up and distilling what the most innovative companies do, so we can try to be more like them. That’s what this Special Episode is all about. For one, does an innovation mindset or methodology exist? And more importantly, can we capture it, codify it, and embed it throughout large and complex organisations? To explore this and the major upcoming engineering, technological, financial and intellectual challenges of the next two decades, I'm joined today by a stellar line-up of guests from Beazley and wider industry. We’ll hear from Adrian Cox, Beazley’s CEO, Neil Kempston, its Head of Incubation Underwriting and Denis Bensoussan, Head of Space. I also talk to Rob Grant, Managing Director at Pollination, a specialist advisor and investor in the energy transition who is here to give us an external perspective. It's an exciting time to be at the forefront of this change, helping to unlock investment and build a more sustainable future. I don’t know about you, but I have ended this process in a much more optimistic frame of mind than I began it. I hope you too have been able to take some inspiration and comfort from this investigation.LINKS:Here's a link to further reading on the Energy Transition from the team at Beazley:https://www.beazley.com/en-US/news-and-events/spotlight-on-environmental-climate-risk-2025/powering-progress/  

Today’s guest has just taken over the reins at a business that has always aimed to be a company that people find easy to work with and enjoy dealing with. Having been around long enough to have met and interviewed all three of his immediate predecessors, I can attest to this. Despite being at the head of a key global reinsurer, all those leaders were always open, accessible and down to earth: very much the sort of executives who you imagined answered their own emails and organised their own diaries. So I am happy to report that Clemens Jungsthofel, the CEO of Hannover Re, represents a continuation of his firm’s refreshing and highly individual character. When you buy reinsurance, at the most fundamental level you are buying life insurance for your insurance company as you protect your capital base from potentially fatal losses. It’s not a relationship you enter into lightly. It’s much more like a marriage than a simple business transaction. That’s why cedants seek out reinsurers who are strong, stable, steady, consistent, discreet and trustworthy, whatever an unpredictable loss landscape or the rollercoaster ride of the market cycle throws at us. Listen on and I’ll wager you can hear Clemens projecting these qualities in the same way his predecessors did. What you see is what you get. The son of an insurance agent, Clemens is someone who has insurance running through his veins. He is one of us and exudes an air of calm unflappability. It’s easy to imagine entrusting him with a trade secret, or admitting you really need his help.What follows is a very timely, broad and deep discussion of the state of the market and Hannover Re’s strategy within it as well as a thorough examination of the short- and long-term industry impacts of phenomena as varied and diverse as the major changes in insurance distribution and AI. Here is someone I found the business of recording a podcast with extremely easy and pleasurable. I think you’ll find listening to it equally pleasant and incredibly useful.Before the industry heads down to Monte Carlo for its annual meeting I can highly recommend this episode as a primer for all the major talking points.LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

I really enjoyed today’s interview because is it packed full of eureka moments. Sometimes looking at a business from the outside it is hard to work out exactly what it does and how and why it does it. Visiting the website of a company of this sort tends to throw up more questions than it answers. And that’s frustrating for a journalist as It’s my job to make sense of these thingsFor me cyber reinsurance underwriter Envelop Risk was one of those business – a bit of a black box that was hard to see into. I had known Jonathan Spry its CEO for about twenty years. Jonathan is very smart and has always operated at the high added value end of the Insurance value chain, where insurance and reinsurance blur into the capital markets, but in all that time I had never sat down and had a really long, researched conversation with him. And that’s why this is such a satisfying interview. In the next forty-five minutes we dissect Envelop’s augmented underwriting business model, looking at its Lloyd’s and Bermuda platforms and its Machine-learning-powered approach to underwriting cyber risk.But this conversation goes way beyond and examines the future of underwriting itself in the global syndicated risk and capital markets, as well as outlining some of the new classes of business that will emerge in the coming decades.Envelop has an appetite way beyond Cyber and this is a really rewarding encounter with someone who understands our business in a more tech and capital savvy way than most of us. At the end of this conversation I felt like the person who has been allowed deep inside the black box and gets to see how it works and interrogate its way of thinking. Jonathan was on excellent form and was disarmingly open and accessible about Envelop’s modus operandi.I feel enlightened for this experience and so will you NOTES:  GOFAI = Good Old-Fashioned AI LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com  

If you just confined your view to the top four brokers, you might easily assume that not much has happened in the US retail broking segment in the last ten years. But if you broadened you view to the top ten or twenty, you’d be faced with a very large number of billion-dollar-plus revenue broking groups that you would have been hard pressed to name ten years ago and many of which didn’t exist as far back as the turn of the millennium. This has come about through huge sums in private investment, a lot of strategic realignment and a considerable amount of M&A. There are a lot of untold stories buried in this remarkable era of expansion and this podcast is all about beginning to remedy that because today’s guest forms part of this remarkably fast-evolving cohort. Gregg Bundschuh is the chief Growth Officer at EPIC, the retail broking arm of the wider Galway Holdings business, which also includes wholesaler JENCAP.As the business approaches $2bn in annual revenues and this podcast does a thorough examination of the intermediary’s specialist business model. As a construction lawyer turned construction broker, entrepreneur and now senior management executive, Gregg’s career is in many ways a personal embodiment of what EPIC is trying to build. It’s all about highly-specific top-down vertical industry expertise that gives an edge in chosen niches, adding more value and building a loyal and growing customer base that doesn’t want to be without your specialist knowledge. The icing on the cake is to then try to orchestrate all the different specialisms so that the client can be served everything they need through a co-ordinated EPIC offering. It’s an incredibly ambitious and challenging way of doing business and one that is setting the bar extremely high. For example, continued above-average growth is needed to fund constant reinvestment in keeping the knowledge and talent base at the cutting edge. But it’s also incredibly refreshing and makes for an enlightening and enjoyable discussion. Gregg is great company and is an insurance player to his core. Listen on and the next 50 minutes will give you an awful lot of original business ideas to think about. NOTES: SIR = Self-Insured RetentionLINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Todays’ guest has been working on implanting the best technology into the London Market since the days when computer screens only displayed varying shades of green. He’s someone who I have known for twenty years and have come to rely upon to unpack all the jargon, spell out the acronyms and explain in layman’s terms what is really happening in the ongoing process of London Market technological reform. This is because Jeff Ward, the sales Director of Ebix Europe, is very wise, very patient and also very good company. He also has clear, common-sense opinions and is good at giving logical, concise answers to complex questions, when others might end up over-elaborating, or indeed over-simplifying.In short Jeff Ward is a market gem and an invaluable friend to help navigate the complex process of digitisation in which the market currently finds itself. Ebix Europe was behind the first iteration of PPL and is now in the market with the latest generation of that market pioneer, a sophisticated digital placing system called PlacingHub.As we sit on the cusp of a genuine revolution in the way global business is to be transacted and information flows through the market, Jeff outlines how the world of electronic placing is likely to develop and explains the genuine complexity of the re-engineering of London’s core accounting and settlement systems in the first phase of the BluePrint 2 reforms. He also explains how adoption of data-first standards is fundamental, outlines why early attempts to change brokers’ and underwriters’ timeworn behaviour during the quoting and placing process did not succeed and looks at the best use cases, and probable limitations of, AI in insurance. I highly recommend you take the next 45 minutes to meet Jeff Ward, my great insurance technology friend and guide. I am absolutely certain that in no time he will become yours too.NOTES:CDR = Core Data RecordGRLC = Global Reinsurance & Large Commercial StandardsLINKS: https://ebixeurope.co.uk/

The global, wholesale and specialty insurance and reinsurance segment of the global market has been putting out very strong results in recent times. If I had to highlight a consistent theme in my interviews of the past year, it would be an almost universal desire among carriers for continued growth, but without compromising on profitability as appetites return and the market becomes more competitive.Today’s guest is a senior underwriter who embodies that conundrum.Andrew McMellin is President of Markel International, a business that has done extremely well in the past few years, and which has set itself ambitious growth targets for the next. This podcast examines the delicate balance that allows growth to continue to flow down to the bottom line and not just add volume on the top. Andrew has had a long and successful career and his insight and long-term perspective is extremely valuable. In this podcast we examine Markel International’s growth strategy in detail and on our way evaluate all the concurrent phenomena impacting the market, such as digitisation and the streamlining of follow capacity, as well as the impact of AI and a more collaborative reinsurance market.Andrew is on exceptional form and this is a very enjoyable encounter with a market player on the top of his game and looking to maximise the opportunities that a still healthy insurance market is affording. LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com

Today's Episode is fun and insightful from start to finish and that is entirely down to my guests. One of the great Eureka moments in insurance comes when you meet an actuary who is a great communicator. Five minutes chatting to them usually unlocks understanding that would take you years to glean yourself, or which indeed you may never have worked out without their help.Luckily today I am talking not to one, but two such people. Simon Pollack (pictured top) is the Founder and Director and Owen Whelan is the Managing Director of Calibrant, a really interesting, relatively young business concentrating on portfolio management, particularly in the burgeoning field of Delegated Underwriting Authority. With MGAs continually gaining market share and also garnering extra scrutiny from senior managers and market regulators, Calibrant is in a fast-growing segment of the market. The core of what Calibrant and its Sybil software platform does is to wring improvements to the loss ratio of underwriting portfolios through joined-up, granular analysis. It sounds simple in theory, but in practice bridging all the gaps between the underwriting, reserving, pricing and senior management functions is the culmination of Simon and Owen’s multi-decade experience in the industry. This is a duo right on the top of their game and this podcast is absolutely packed with valuable insights garnered from long and successful careers in our business. Simon and Owen met as London Market drinking buddies and you should think of this podcast as a very enjoyable chat in a bar with two great friends and a glass of your favourite tipple in your hand.You’ll learn a lot and after listening to this I expect you’ll want to spend a lot more time with this fun and down-to-earth duo.LINKS: https://www.calibrantinsurance.com/

Today’s guest is a visionary and in the next 40 minutes he’s going to outline the future of broking. As insurance placement process evolves from being the movement of documents around the market to a seamless flow of data between parties, we are on the cusp of a big bang in complex insurance. If you think that this is something that won’t be happening any time soon, you are completely wrong - it’s already happening. Anthony Siggers is the Digital Leader for Marsh Specialty UK and Marsh has already fully digitised 70% of its London slips.Given that Marsh places about $15bn dollars of premium a year into the London Market, this is one tech change that is already way past the tipping point.If a massive broker like Marsh can do it, so can everyone else. So we’re digitising the market, but what next? That’s what we spend most of this podcast discussing. For example how much of the market will be lead capacity and how much automatic or algorithmic follow? How will a broker be working in the near future?What will happen to costs, commissions and insurance penetration? And what about the impact of AI?And what are the secondary effects of all this change likely to be?Siggers has been implementing technology and pursuing entrepreneurial ideas in and around insurance and the financial markets for thirty years. He is eloquent and he is also great fun. This interview will completely change your perception of where the syndicated insurance and reinsurance markets are heading and how fast they are doing so.If you only listen to one podcast this year, make sure it is this one.NOTES:JSON (pronounced like the name Jason) is a file format for data transferLINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com