Brokers Can Be Catalysts for Specialty Products Innovation

In an era of insurance transformation, where process simplification and flawless customer service is expected, innovation in policy and product is a must—especially when it comes to the ...

Industry Veterans Relish Fresh Start for Their Latest Legacy-Free Ventures

Although the insurance market is awash with capacity and competition, two new specialty companies—a re/insurer and a broker—formed earlier this year, aiming to create something new and different ...

#MeToo in the London Market: Dos and Don'ts for Executives

"A fuss about nothing." That is what I have heard time and again in the past six months about the groundswell of voices complaining about sexism in the London insurance market. The normally whispered ...

The Aftershocks of the Guy Carpenter-JLT Re Alignment

Now that the dust has settled following the historic merger of giant broker Marsh and Jardine Lloyd Thompson, the transaction's impact on the two firms' reinsurance broking units, Guy Carpenter and ...

ReinsurTechs Break Through: Reinsurance May Finally Be on InsurTech's Radar

InsurTech startups targeting the property/casualty insurance industry proliferated in multiple ways over the last few years. Relatively few of them focus on reinsurers, however, and Will Dove has ...

Innovating at the Edges of Society and the Economy

Emerging risks with little or no claims history can be notoriously difficult to underwrite—but many specialty lines companies are finding ways to put their toes in the water to insure these new ...

Mastering the Peculiarities of Growing Specialty Lines Takes Time, Talent and Discipline

Things are looking good for property/casualty insurers writing specialty business. Specialty lines premium has about doubled as a share of overall commercial premium in the 21st century, judging by ...

Research, Repeat and Reuse: Specialty Carriers' Unique Toolset for Product Innovation

"The industry really does look to specialty writers to be at the forefront of innovation," says Gail McGiffin. Specialty insurance carriers have a unique "toolset" that helps them grow through ...

As Legacy Acquisitions Boom, What Will Happen to Deal Pricing?

Activity in the legacy insurance market has boomed. However, as capital pours in, perhaps it is best to understand how pricing will develop in the space and whether increased capital will drive price ...

Building a Specialty Carrier: Does Culture Beat Strategy, or Is Culture Strategy?

After getting the go-ahead to build a new insurance company, BHSI's founding executive team—Peter Eastwood, president and CEO; David Bresnahan, executive vice president; David Fields, executive ...

Staying Profitable in an Increasingly Fragmented World: SCOR Global P&C CEO Conoscente

There are several things that keep SCOR's Jean-Paul Conoscente awake at night. Climate change is one of them; cyber risk is another. Only time will tell whether these risks are actually insurable, ...

A Trailblazer in the Lloyd's Marketplace Looks Back and Ahead

It took enormous courage to walk into Lloyd's for the first time and into the underwriting room—also known as "The Room." I was a very junior broker with absolutely no experience, tasked with ...

Insurance Linked Securities in 2019: Asking the Right Questions

The record losses we saw in 2017 and 2018 were felt heavily by the insurance industry, and there is no denying that two years of losses have affected investor sentiment. While such a statement is ...

Risk Alert: Is Water Making Us Fat?

Drinking water: a commodity so abundant in modern society that we rarely give it much thought. At least until recently with two dramatic discoveries. First, the discovery of lead-contaminated water ...

The Future of Insurance Has Brokers at Its Heart

When many of my peers and I entered the industry, several days or weeks could pass between the initial inquiry by a potential policyholder and the time a transaction took place. Applications were ...

Good Leaders Challenge the Status Quo—and Themselves

Jean-Paul Conoscente became the CEO of SCOR Global P&C in April 2019 when his predecessor, Victor Peignet, retired after 35 years with the company. Before Peignet left the company, he offered ...

U.S. Private Flood Insurance: The Journey to Build a New Market

Not long ago, private flood insurance was thought to be an impossible dream in the property/casualty sector. There were numerous arguments supporting the common wisdom that a meaningful market for ...

B3i's Blockchain-Powered Insurance Network Gets Closer to Solving Some Industry Problems

The author Douglas Adams once said, "We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works." Many of us can relate, especially with new technology such as distributed ledger ...

Relationships Remain the Required Human Element of the Industry: Nationwide's Rasmussen

From autonomous vehicles to index funds, our world and our industry are changing, and it would seem that people are less a required element. But I'm here to tell you that people—more specifically ...

How to Keep It Going

In his 2018 year-in-review letter, BHSI CEO Peter Eastwood confronted the question of whether the BHSI culture and approach to business are scalable and can be sustained as the company gets bigger. ...

The Importance of Product Development

An excerpt from Deloitte's 2019 Insurance Outlook Why should product development be high on insurer agendas in 2019? Most insurers have long struggled with innovative product development. Working ...

Reinsurance Industry Continues Dabbling With Technology, But It's Time to Dive In

If you look at the history of technology, a huge new trend has completely transformed a business sector every 10-15 years. However, usually the introduction of a new digital development is ...

Lessons From Two Customer Experience Legends

Earlier this year, in the span of just a couple weeks, the business world lost two great customer experience strategists. Jack Bogle was the founder of Vanguard Investments, which is now the ...

ReinsurTechs to Watch (and Reinsurance-Friendly InsurTechs):

Analyze Re. This Verisk company, founded in 2013, offers software analytics designed to help reinsurers and insurers move faster on pricing and portfolio decisions. "Helping all companies in the ...

Specialty Lines Gets Personal

While most of the growth in specialty lines is in commercial lines, recent years have seen the emergence of specialty products in personal lines, long a bastion of standardized, admitted insurance ...