After 44 years in the insurance business, Stephen Catlin is retiring at the end of 2017. While he’ll be retiring from his role as executive deputy chairman of XL Group, he emphasizes that he won’t be retiring from the industry—just entering a new phase of work.
Executive Summary
Stephen Catlin looks back on a time when underwriters were kings at Lloyd's and the industry's only recruits were the sons of existing participants. The London market has changed, but perhaps not enough, he tells CM's International Editor L.S. Howard, identifying areas of process inefficiency and an unproductive focus on past rather than future risks among the obstacles setting the industry up for competition from outsiders.He hasn’t quite figured out what he’ll do, but one thing is clear from interviews and recent speeches: He will not be spending idle days on the golf course. He might start a new company, but it won’t be Catlin 2—another Catlin Group.
“There are lots of changes going on in the industry, and it’s going to need people who are prepared to truly embrace change and benefit from it. That could mean anything or nothing for me. We’ll see what happens,” he said in an interview with Carrier Management.
Catlin has spent a good deal of time recently reflecting on his long career, partly because of his impending retirement. In addition, he and James Burcke have collected some of the reflections in a book they have written.
