The Voice of Insurance

The Voice of Insurance Mark Geoghegan
  • 4.8 (64)
  • BUSINESS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Insurance is a maze. Don’t get lost. Mark Geoghegan asks directions from all the top people in the Global Insurance and Reinsurance Industry

  1. 14 HR AGO

    Ep297 Scott Egan CEO SiriusPoint: If you fall asleep, you go backwards

    Todays’ podcast with Scott Egan is a tour de force. I think there are various reasons for that. The first is that whereas when we first spoke in 2023, Scott was relatively new in the CEO role at SiriusPoint and his strategy hadn’t had time to bed in and take full effect, now we were speaking after a year when the business had posted another set of consistently strong results and any talk of a turnaround was clearly a question belonging to the past. Secondly this was now the third time that Scott has been on the podcast and his confidence and comfort in doing this kind of thing has grown, but third and most importantly - this is a podcast that is completely forward-looking and optimistic in tone. Because SiriusPoint has rebuilt credibility and has demonstrated an ability to grow profitably it now has more strategic options at its disposal than it did three years ago. What makes this such an engaging interview is the chance it provides to examine those strategic choices, particularly now that the market environment is becoming more challenging and competitive. Listening back it is Scott’s confidence and clarity of purpose that shine through in this encounter and that’s why I can highly recommend a listen for anyone looking for a route map though this transitioning market. NOTES: I let one acronym through. PYD is Prior-Year Development. LINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo, now part of Sapiens: https://www.advantagego.com

    46 min

  2. 7 APR

    Ep296 Ivan Gonzalez CEO Swiss Re Corporate Solutions: Our strategic priority is to lead

    Today’s guest is the CEO of an $8bn GWP global insurance business. Ivan Gonzalez has spent 25 years travelling the world within the Swiss Re organisation, from his native Colombia to New York and China. He now runs Swiss Re Corporate Solutions. After undergoing a turnaround process a few years ago this is an organisation that has regained its strategic direction and confidence and is now posting combined ratios in the 80s. So it is from a position of strategic strength that this conversation developed. Ivan is an excellent guest because his passion for the role shines through and won’t allow him to mince his words. He is demonstrative and you quickly understand where he stands on any given issue. Given Swiss Re Corporate Solutions’ global capabilities and market relevance, that means we could have long and very detailed discussions on all the key market issues of the day. As such, the Corporate Solutions strategy, the opportunities arising from the global data centre boom, the application of AI in insurance and AI as a newly emerging peril, as well as the growth in MGAs all get the same unambiguous treatment. Ivan is a strong and charismatic leader who is fun to talk to. He is a dream guest and this makes for a highly recommended listen for anyone looking for clues on how to navigate a global market now clearly entering a softening phase. LINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo, now part of Sapiens: https://www.advantagego.com

    45 min

  3. 31 MAR

    Ep295 Richard Milner CEO Chaucer Group: Let's do what we're good at

    Today’s guest is Richard Milner, CEO of Chaucer Group. Chaucer is a global specialty insurance and reinsurance institution with a great pedigree and significant scale, both inside and outside the Lloyd’s market. Richard is coming up for two years in post as CEO and is beginning to make his mark on the business’s long-term strategy. Richard has had the sort of underwriting career that makes him a very relatable guest. He worked his way up from photocopying slips at a Lloyd’s box to travelling the insurance world. Now he’s in senior management he’s easy to talk to because he’s still unambiguously an underwriter to his core. As a result this interview is really down-to-earth and practical in focus. In it Richard lays out his five-year plan for Chaucer and we dissect the issues of the day in great detail and variety, ranging from how rates and business flows are holding up in a more competitive market, to an assessment of AI as a new emerging peril and potential new line of business. Richard is great company and I can highly recommend a listen. LINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

    31 min

  4. 24 MAR

    Ep294 Sean McGovern LMA Chair: Building the market of the Future

    Today’s guest is one of the best qualified people in the London Market. In a thirty-year career he has been a senior executive right at the top of Lloyd’s and has either chaired or sat on the board of almost all the institutions that underpin the market and represent it to the outside world. Today Sean McGovern is the CEO of UK & Lloyd’s at AXA XL and has just taken over the Chairmanship of the Lloyd’s Market Association (LMA), the trade body that represents corporate capital in Lloyd’s. Sean will speak for both organisations at varying times in our chat today. The timing couldn’t be better. In recent years the LMA has really set the agenda on some of the most strategic developments in the way that underwriting takes place in the subscription market and this discussion goes right to heart of how a future Lloyd’s will underwrite, how business will be brokered and how capital and new talent will access the market. I have been interviewing Sean for twenty years and he has a great skill in communicating in a really eloquent, but also very direct and concise way. He is very good at speaking plainly and making complicated ideas easy to understand. Today’s podcast is no different and this is one of the most broad-reaching and enlightened conversations I have had with anyone since founding the podcast over six years ago. As Lloyd’s embarks on a fresh five-year strategic plan this is a great primer on what all the issues are, where the opportunities lie, and what strategic decisions have to be taken for the market to continue to prosper. NOTES: The latest LMA report is on Lead and Follow. I can highly recommend a read: https://lmalloyds.com/campaigns/lead-and-follow-in-the-lloyds-and-london-market-beyond-the-binary/ And if you haven’t already read the LMA’s seminal publication on Enhanced Underwriting you can access it here LINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

    48 min

  5. 17 MAR

    Ep293 Mark Christer CEO Wakam UK: Fixated on Velocity

    As regular listeners will know, the Voice of Insurance usually interviews people from the global wholesale, speciality insurance and reinsurance end of the market, insuring the type of risks that tend to have to cross borders to find the right type of coverage. Today’s podcast is a slight departure from the norm because I am talking to someone who is working in the general insurance space in the UK. But they are doing so from a wholly original wholesale and tech-enabled angle that also incorporates one of the hot trends of the past few years – embedded insurance. Mark Christer is CEO of Wakam UK, a firm that uses the business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) and MGA models to go to market in niche lines of business where it can stay under the radar of the volume and scale players in the UK’s hyper-competitive market. Wakam UK is the UK subsidiary of the rebranded French insurance group which can boast an illustrious 200-year history as France’s oldest private insurer, La Parisienne. Mark came into insurance because of his work in IT and has enormous experience in the UK market He is the former managing director of personal lines for RSA in the UK, where he looked after the high-profile digital brand More Than. Given Mark’s background it is perhaps unsurprising that Wakam UK is aiming to bring technology, including AI, to speed up the insurance process and go live with new prospects within weeks rather than months. Wakam UK already had reasonable scale in its legacy form, but in its new tech-first guise seems likely to achieve substantial growth. I think regular listeners will learn a lot from Mark and find a lot in common with him. In a world of hype, here is someone with all the experience and knowledge to make the promise become reality. His enthusiasm and positive energy is infectious, so I can highly recommend a listen. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

    45 min

  6. 10 MAR

    Ep292 Miguel Rosa CEO Mapfre Re: Write the Client

    Today’s podcast is with the CEO of a reinsurer that wrote just under $8 billion dollars of Gross premiums in 2025. Miguel Rosa runs Mapfre Re, a Global Top-20 reinsurer with a reputation for long-term strategic thinking and consistency in an often unstable market. As the reinsurance market softens, at a significantly faster rate than many reinsurers were expecting, it is fascinating to hear Miguel’s view on the prospects for profitable growth in 2026 and beyond. With 2 decades of reinsurance experience, topped off with three years in motor insurance Miguel brings an exceptionally well-rounded perspective to his role. In this podcast we look at the dynamics affecting the reinsurance market and the growth opportunities remaining within it, but we also broaden the discussion out to include more specific themes such as the opportunity in MGAs and AI, both as an aide to operational efficiency and more skilful underwriting, but also as an emerging peril in and of itself. Miguel is great company and the time will pass extremely quickly. I learned a lot and I think you will too. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

    40 min

  7. 3 MAR

    Ep291 Jonathan Tritton MD Burns & Wilcox Global Solutions: Seeking Harmony in the Value Chain

    I really enjoyed today’s interview because it outlines what is quite an original proposition in a very competitive marketplace. Jonathan Tritton is the Managing Director of Burns & Wilcox Global Solutions, which is the London and International wholesale broking arm of the US-headquartered Kaufman Group. The group has been formed via the coming together of the Chesterfield and Lochain Patrick broking businesses. So far, so familiar, you might say – a US-led broking group with London operations is hardly a big deal. But Jonathan is a recent joiner and the pitch he makes for his new employer is compelling. As the insurance value chain becomes more technologically advanced and much more efficient at allocating the right risks to the right distribution channels and the right forms of underwriting capital, despite the headwinds of the softening market, Jonathan is very optimistic about the growth prospects for his business unit. With a good combination of, sufficient scale and resources to be in the game and an enormous amount of room to grow, Jonathan’s optimism has an authentic ring to it. In this podcast specific growth plans, the digitisation and facilitisation of the market and Jonathan’s ambitions for a Lloyd’s syndicate as well as his thoughts on AI all get a full airing. Jonathan has been on the podcast before and is a very relaxed, eloquent and energetic interviewee, so this is an episode that will fly by. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

    40 min

  8. 24 FEB

    Ep290 Jacqui Ferrier CEO Carbon Underwriting: Sorting Wheat from Chaff

    Today’s podcast is all about catching up with a business that was last on the show five years ago. And we’ve got an awful lot of catching up to do. Back then Carbon Underwriting was on the show because it was one of the first crop of Syndicates in a Box at Lloyd’s, laying out interesting ideas on how to modernise and optimise the underwriting of delegated authority business. Now it has matured into a carrier with GWP in the hundreds of millions that has built its own proprietary core systems and developed a broad and diverse capital ecosystem to support its underwriting. The last five years have also been transformative for the delegated underwriting sector, with explosive growth combining with strong results. That’s why this interview with Carbon CEO Jacqui Ferrier is so interesting. As the market turns and a potential reckoning may lie in wait for the unwary or unprepared, Jacqui is a rare domain expert with her feet firmly on the ground and her eyes fixed on detailed underwriting data. The secrets of outperformance in delegated underwriting are all discussed here in the open for anyone who cares to listen. Fast ingestion of data, swift analysis and feedback, as well as absolute transparency with all stakeholders are key features Jacqui can afford to be so open and candid about what constitutes Carbon’s edge, in part I think because what she and her team have managed to build is the sort of thing that is easy to talk about in theory but extremely hard to execute in practice. Jacqui is great company and there is a huge amount of underwriting experience and expertise packed into the next 45 minutes. What’s more, the possible future strategic directions for Carbon as it continues to scale are a revelation. NOTES & LINKS API stands for Application Programming Interface Here is a link to the first Episode I did with Carbon, almost six years ago: https://www.thevoiceofinsurance.com/podcast/episode/3878ea54/ep-42-coverholders-in-a-box-stephen-card-of-carbon-underwriting We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

    57 min
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4.8
out of 5
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About

Insurance is a maze. Don’t get lost. Mark Geoghegan asks directions from all the top people in the Global Insurance and Reinsurance Industry

Information

  • Creator
    The Voice of Insurance Mark Geoghegan
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    356
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2020-23 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    The Voice of Insurance

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