Leader's Edge

In this episode of Falling Into It, we meet Eyad Kabbani, a 26-year-old assistant vice president who works in the Cyber and E&O Center of Excellence at Marsh. A graduate of the Fox School of Business and Management at Temple University, Kabbani studied risk management and insurance and earned a Council Foundation scholarship after his internship at Johnson, Kendall & Johnson in 2017. We discuss what attracted him to the industry, how his internship helped solidify his decision to pursue a career in insurance brokerage, and how growing up working in his family's small business shaped his work ethic and prepared him for the corporate world.

Guiding the Healthcare System: A Q&A with former U.S. HHS Secretaries Alex Azar and Donna Shalala

In this episode we talk with Lori Bailey, Chief Insurance Office at Corvus. With over 20 years of experience in cyber liability, Bailey shares her thoughts on the evolution of cyber risk and whether coverage has kept up. We also talk about the lack of historical data for cyber underwriting and how that's being addressed, as well as where the market is headed.

Karl Olson, vice president, professional management liability practice leader at Burns & Wilcox, talks about how healthcare organizations have managed this balancing act and what new risks may emerge as a result of COVID.

As one may suspect, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the labor-intensive agriculture industry particularly hard. But as Denise Brown and Rick Harrison from InterWest Insurance Services explain, how your Ag clients fare during coronavirus, and how they handle risk, will depend on many factors.

In this episode of our podcast series with U.S.-based insurer, Nationwide, we meet the company’s vice president of cyber insurance, Catherine Rudow, and its senior vice president and chief information security officer, Todd Lukens. Together, we explore the dynamics of ransomware, cyber entry points that businesses of all sizes should be aware of, the evolution of the threat actor, and how the public and private sectors can come together to improve the nation's cybersecurity. Rudow and Lukens warn that as we evolve as enterprises and as a society, threat actors will also evolve. They say business processes—beyond just systems and data—are at risk, and exposure is not going away any time soon. In this conversation, we identify ways organizations can improve their cyber hygiene, and better adapt to and manage the current cyber threat environment.

Amrit David works with management teams, private equity firms and alternative capital providers across a variety of transactions in the insurance brokerage space.

We check in with him periodically on M&A and sat down recently to discuss brokerage IPOs, the use of SPACs, and other recent trends in brokerage transactions. Click for the podcast.

Hagerty, a global automotive enthusiast brand and classic car insurer, recently announced plans to merge with SPAC, Aldel Financial. The deal, which is valued at $3.13 billion, according to reports, will allow Hagerty to go public and trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HGTY. We spoke with Fred Turcotte, Hagerty CFO, to discuss the recent merger, where Hagerty plans to grow, automotive trends, and, of course, the classic car market.

AXA XL’s Bob Peretti, Chief Distribution Officer, Americas, shares how his team is approaching broker relationships in the face of multifaceted risk, a constantly changing M&A landscape, and the ongoing pandemic

In this episode of Falling Into It, we meet Eleanor Ko, a 29-year-old account manager at Woodruff Sawyer. A graduate from Seattle University with a degree in business administration and management, Ko shares what she wished she had learned in college about the insurance industry, her passion for learning new skills, and what it’s like juggling her professional and personal life, while working from home.