The Voice of Insurance The Voice of Insurance Mark Geoghegan

Today’s episode is a masterclass with two leaders in the North American professional liability market.
Often on this show we talk about the big picture in very broad brushstrokes, but today is refreshing because we are getting into specific and specialist detail about some of the most broad-reaching and dynamic classes of business anywhere in the world.
Danielle Librizzi, Head of Professional Liability, and Chris Cooper, Head of Media Liability, at QBE North America have a lifetime of market experience between them and this is a lively discussion.
Casualty is under the spotlight the world over, but nowhere more so than in North America, so these two senior underwriters are right at the frontline in the battle to keep on top of new perils and trends in the world’s fastest-moving and highest stakes market.
Here I ask what Danielle makes of casualty rate adequacy and I ask Chris how the pandemic, the trend to digital platforms and the writers’ strike have affected the media liability risk landscape.
How is QBE’s professional liability division responding to the call for the globalisation of QBE’s offering and far great collaboration between departments?
And how is QBE utilizing Artificial Intelligence on the ground in its own underwriting processes and, perhaps more importantly, how does Chris view it as an emerging media liability and potentially systemic general E&O peril?
I got all the answers I was looking for and if you stay tuned so will you.
Danielle and Chris are excellent company and this will be a very rewarding listen for anyone wanting to get a better perspective on the North American professional liability market
LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/

Today’s podcast is one of the most eclectic and far-reaching I have produced since founding the Voice of Insurance over four years ago.
And that is entirely down to today’s guests. Ian Summers Global Business Leader of AdvantageGo (pictured top) is a well-known figure to anyone who has worked in the Global Insurance Market and has a full career of pioneering market modernisation behind him from within the market as Global Information Officer at Aon and serving the market at major Software companies.
And if were possible, Bill Pieroni (pictured bottom) has had an even more all-encompassing career to date than Ian. Starting outside the industry at top consultancies, a senior role at State Farm and five years as Global Chief Operating Officer at Marsh followed.
For the last eight years Bill has headed up global insurance data standards body ACORD.
But if you thought that meant our chat would be limited to global data standards, you’d be completely wrong
At their core what Bill and Ian do is provide the tech and the utilities to help insurance get on and do what it does best.
Bill and Ian have only been so successful so far because they understand the industry inside and out and that means this podcast is far more wide-reaching than you would imagine.
For instance, you wouldn’t expect tech experts to commission a historical study on the efficacy of M&A for the insurance industry, would you? But these two have, principally because they are so embedded into the sector that their level of understanding matches most of the most seasoned Executives and analysts.
So get ready for a real feast.
The winners and losers in insurance M&A, really-detailed insights into the best applications for Artificial Intelligence, the real reason why insurance is so hard to transform and the prospects for the London Market if its latest digital reforms are successful are all to come.
And the style of delivery may surprise you. If Ian is a strong and forthright character, Bill is almost off the charts in the energy and passion that he brings to this discussion.
I had a real blast and learnt a huge amount. Listen on and so will you.
NOTES:
The M&A study we discuss can be downloaded here. I highly recommend a read – it’s fascinating stuff (and could potentially save you $billions!)

Top-tier MGA CFC Underwriting has undergone some very well-publicised leadership changes in the last few months and Andy Holmes is the business’s newly-appointed CEO, so I’m delighted to have him on the show as this week’s guest.
Andy’s been part of this organisation since very early in its remarkable growth story and was previously its Chief Underwriting Officer, so he knows the business inside and out.
Nothing was off the table in this discussion, so we started where we needed to, but soon got swept away in a whirlwind of M&A, new product launches and insights into the world of cyber, embedded insurance, parametric covers and, of course, Artificial Intelligence.
Andy is incredibly engaging and easy to talk to and in this podcast he reveals a huge amount of accumulated insurance business wisdom and fills in many details about CFC’s original and highly successful insurance philosophy.
Listening back to this interview it’s clear that although CFC might have had big changes at the top, it’s definitely not slowing down and its body corporate and innovative culture remain as effective and worth studying as ever.
NOTES:We mention Ciaran Martin, who is former CEO of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and chairs the Technical Committee of the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC).The CEO of the CMC is William Mayes.
LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:https://www.advantagego.com/
 
 
 

Today’s guest is well on the way to cracking a problem that has been vexing the market for thirty years and something I have been writing about specifically for the last twenty.
We all know that the process of syndication of risk in the London and other international insurance and reinsurance markets is full of inefficiencies and ripe for reform.
But just because a problem has been around for a long time and has been well documented, it doesn’t make finding and implementing a solution any easier.
I have lost count of the number of insurance and reinsurance exchanges I have seen launch and then wither and die over the last two decades.
Gilbert Harrap, the CEO of InsurX is someone who is setting out to change all of this.
Many exchanges failed either because they were founded by people with little understanding of complex insurance or they alienated their potential users, particularly the brokers, who often rightly or wrongly perceived them as a threat to their businesses.
InsurX is different because Gilbert is someone with market experience who is focusing on building a utility that could help both underwriters and brokers increase volumes and improve margins.
This is a fascinating conversation with someone running a business that has already gained significant traction in two classes of business and is looking to expand across the board.
Gilbert is one of us and I think that’s a big part of why InsurX has been well received. He is laser-focused on helping brokers serve customers better while allowing underwriters to diversify in smart new cost-effective ways.
He doesn’t want to be an underwriter or a broker – he just wants to be the one connecting them using intelligent new methods that add value to both parties.
I really enjoyed my time with Gilbert and left feeling that InsurX might be one of the first exchanges to make it in the complex syndicated risk space.
I also ended this conversation feeling much more optimistic about the future of the London Market and its prospects of increasing its global share of high-quality insurance business.
 
LINKS:We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/

Today’s guest is VIPR’s Client Services Director, David Butler.
On this show I speak to lots of CEOs and that means my guests are sometimes quite far removed from the day-to-day solving of problems for clients.
David’s job is to be as close to the client as possible, finding out what their real problems are and therefore what they really need.
It’s then his job to make sure that what VIPR are providing those customers with is exactly what’s required – and more importantly that customers have all the training and support to make sure they can get the maximum benefit out of a product and can adapt and reconfigure it effectively as their business develops.
All this means is that he probably has his finger closer on the pulse of what is worrying carriers in the market than almost anyone around.
So as the market digitises and looks to analyse the new data pools that it is collecting and apply new technologies like AI at many different points in the value chain, it is people like David who are going to be doing all the heavy lifting.
David is a technology specialist with just under 30 years’ experience and his insights into how to make the most of all the exciting new tech at our disposal or just coming onstream, is hugely valuable.
He’s also a really friendly person who has spent much of that long career explaining complicated ideas in ways that are really easy to understand and that’s why I can heartily recommend a listen today.NOTESI promised to look up what the common computing term BUS stands for:
BUS is an acronym for Binary Unit System. These are used to used to transfer data around a network (a bit like the way a real-life bus moves people about).

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 that you will always know where you stand and exactly what he expects of you, but the very detailed nature of his responses shows that he also listens extremely carefully to what questions he is asked.
SiriusPoint is very much marching to his beat and he is a very engaging, disarming and direct podcast guest.
LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/