Leader's Edge

Lívia Albuquerque Bisoni has had a fascinating life. After working in Brazil’s fashion industry and then pivoting to insurance and moving to Portugal, the 33-year-old today is head of international and institutional relations for MDS Group. Fresh off her team’s win in the Global Broker Smackdown at the 2024 Insurance Leadership Forum, Bisoni shares with Leader’s Edge how she was able to switch careers, the importance of international business etiquette, and what risk trends she foresees impacting clients next year.

Given his background working with pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and medical insurers, as well as working with individuals to fill their prescriptions, Dr. Simon Leung, Vice President, Head of Pharmacy, Conner Strong & Buckelew has in some ways seen it all.

Leung’s experience has shaped his approach to pharmacy benefit consulting and his view on transparency with respect to drug costs. He discusses where all the different industry players disagree, which cost-saving levers employers have access to and the value of different types of data that inform client strategy. 

Leader's Edge was on-site at The Council's Insurance Leadership Forum in October to capture the conversations and energy that always accompany this key industry gathering.

In the first of three special interviews conducted at ILF, retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO supreme allied commander Europe and a current board member of global broker Aon, discusses what risks American companies face from abroad, what trends he foresees impacting the world, and what U.S. citizens can do to tamp down the political divisiveness running rampant in our country.

In this episode we meet Dottie Chalmers Cutter, Chief Operating Officer of Chalmers Insurance Group.

Cutter shares her story of becoming the 4th generation to run her family’s insurance business. She also discusses the importance of company culture and hard work.

Everyone in the insurance value chain wins when the broker is equipped with better data, says Jeff Cohen, senior vice president at Zywave.

Cohen paints a vivid picture of what a fully optimized digital industry could look like, but cautions that we’re not there yet. He discusses where the industry is on this journey, why digital evolution is moving at the pace that it is, and what we can do about it. He also digs into the differences between manual and digital processes, how to bring out useful data points for insureds, and how Zywave is building its data from the ground up.

Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers executive chairman Ken Crerar sits down for a candid conversation on leading The Council through 30 years of growth, change, disruption, and success.

Being a bank-owned premium financing company means that the economic environment, especially changes in banking, is a major factor in the business landscape, says Ben Rubin, chief risk officer for FIRST Insurance Funding & Wintrust Life Finance. In this podcast, sponsored by First Insurance Funding, Rubin  discusses the particulars of the current financial services environment and how brokers can position premium financing in their conversations with clients. He also explains the different options it provides, how different sized companies might use premium financing in different ways, and more.

In this episode we meet Ryan L. Smith Executive Vice President of Atlanta Life Insurance.

Smith shares how his childhood entrepreneurial mindset led him to working with NBA legend Magic Johnson. He also discusses his perspective on life insurance, and why its vital for a family member to have. 

For hundreds of years the insurance market known as Lloyd's of London has played a notorious role in the world of risk and finance.

To understand how this market started, podcast producer Zach Ewell spoke with Geraldine Morgan, a history enthusiast who gives tours in London England around the history of Lloyds and insurance. Morgan takes us on a tour from the great fire of London of 1666 to the establishment of Lloyd’s Coffee Shop.

 To learn more about Morgan's tour you can visit her website. 

One year into the newly created role of head of North America, AXIS' Mike McKenna joins the Leader’s Edge podcast to discuss how he plans to execute on opportunities in the market as Axis dives deeper into specialty lines.  McKenna drills down into where the opportunities are in the difficult casualty market, discusses the company’s new Lloyd’s syndicate focused on the energy transition, and talks about serving the lower middle market effectively.