Today’s guest is someone who combines well-above-average intelligence with an approachability and a willingness to study and cover risks that many of his peers can’t or won’t consider. Ryan Mather is CEO of Ariel Re, a business that has positioned itself at the cutting edge of exciting emerging classes such as Green energy and Cyber reinsurance, while the same time maintaining an edge in more traditional lines such as property cat – all within the Lloyd’s platform. All this makes him something a breath of fresh air. He is also frank, open and direct but disarmingly charming. These are ingredie ..read more

Some podcast interviews are really fulfilling to be involved with. Sometimes it’s the rapport I have with the guest and sometimes it’s the subject matter and the insights that I find the most satisfying. Today’s podcast is a rare combination because it’s both of the above. Jeff Radke Co-Founder and CEO at Accelerant Holdings, is clearly on top of the world in this interview. His business is absolutely flying; it’s now employing around 375 people and is connecting an amazing 190 MGAs with 12 insurers and 66 reinsurers on both sides of the Atlantic. The organisation wrote just over $1.7billion o ..read more

Today’s guest runs a business that this year is set to quadruple in size since the first time he was on the show just over two years ago. What’s more it is looking to more than double again in the medium term. Tanguy Touffut CEO and co-founder of Descartes Underwriting is one of the indispensable leaders in the burgeoning parametric insurance sector. Descartes is probably the best-funded and certainly most ambitious of a cohort of peers to emerge in the last 5 years on the back of the insurtech boom. It has made a large strategic bet on the sector, building a global network of offices and now ..read more

Today’s guest is a leader in one of the most innovative and interesting businesses in the market. He was last on the show as part of a duo but is now here in his own right. This should all make much more sense when I tell you that I am talking about Dan Burrows, the Group CEO of Fidelis Insurance Group. Since we last met Fidelis has successfully split into the balance sheet insurer that Dan runs and the MGA the Fidelis Partnership led by Richard Brindle, in a move to a hybrid structure that is the first of its kind. Fidelis Insurance Group has also floated as a public company, completed a seco ..read more

Today’s podcast is all about the insurance of political risk and violence and we are going to come at this subject from all angles. This episode is intended to be an all-round masterclass for anyone with an interest in these fascinating and fast-growing specialist lines of business. Is the world a riskier place and are risks going to remain insurable? And where is most of the new demand of the coming decades going to be coming from? All is examined in detail. Much has been made of the exceptional number of elections taking place in global democracies in 2024 as another possible source of polit ..read more

Today’s Podcast is all about innovation and today’s guest has been responsible for doing more of it than most. James Slaughter is Chief Underwriting Officer at Apollo Group, a Lloyd’s business that has been behind collaborations and new product launches galore in recent times. Be it exploring semi-automatic underwriting and the application of artificial intelligence, the development of its own ibott syndicate, helping launch a parametric syndicate, or other specialist start-ups focusing on risks as diverse as Cyber, Drones, employee parental benefits or unlocking new business from Africa, Apol ..read more

Today’s guest carries out an incredibly important role representing the whole London Market in the UK’s corridors of power. That means looking out for a market that wrote over $100bn in core gross written premium and controlled just under $160bn in all in 2022, increasing its global market share to over 8 per cent. That also means representing a market that now employs some 60,000 people and produces two percent of UK GDP and eight-and-a-half percent of London’s GDP. Caroline Wagstaff, CEO of the London Market Group, was born to do a job like this. She’s passionate and very difficult to say no ..read more

Today’s guest is in charge of a team of around 400, writing a book approaching $3 billion in gross written premium in the largest wholesale insurance market in the world I have had many CEOs on the show who run significantly smaller operations. And that’s what gives this podcast so much weight. Wendy Houser is Chief Wholesale Officer of Markel and is one of a select group of people with day-to-day visibility of the booming US Excess and Surplus lines (E and S) market. So today we are going to go into quite a lot of detail about the state of this huge and dynamic segment. An unprecedented level ..read more

I can’t believe it’s been three-and-a-half years since I had Alex Maloney on the podcast for a full episode to himself. We’ve had brief catch-ups at Monte Carlo and when we bump into each other in the London Market, but I haven’t had time with Alex properly devoted to understanding what he and the Lancashire Group is thinking. A huge amount has happened since we last spoke, not least Lancashire’s entry into the Casualty Treaty arena and its decision to open up a new operation in the US Excess & Surplus lines market. Alex is a great guest because he is one of the most direct and straight-ta ..read more

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 ..read more