By Insurance Search
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The podcast currently has 207 episodes available.
On the podcast this week, we welcome Andrew Thornton, Head of Advisory at Grant Thornton Bermuda.
Andrew shares:
Connect with Andrew Howie on LinkedIn or find out more at Grant Thornton Bermuda
The Insurance Coffee House Podcast is brought to you by Insurance Search.
We are a global Insurance Executive Search Consultancy, supporting Insurance and Insurtech businesses to attract and retain the very best insurance talent.
Find out more about showcasing your employer brand as a guest on the Insurance Coffee House Podcast or sign up to our News and Insights.
Or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram
Insurance Executive Search Consultants in USA, London and Bermuda.
Copyright Insurance Search 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
On the podcast this week, we continue our Bermuda series by interviewing Jesse DeCouto and Tonia Morgan at Canopius Re.
Chief Underwriting Officer, Jesse and Chief Financial Officer, Tonia talk about:
Connect with Jesse DeCouto and Tonia Morgan on LinkedIn or find out more about career opportunities at Canopius Group.
The Insurance Coffee House Podcast is brought to you by Insurance Search.
We are a global Insurance Executive Search Consultancy, supporting Insurance and Insurtech businesses to attract and retain the very best insurance talent.
Find out more about showcasing your employer brand as a guest on the Insurance Coffee House Podcast or sign up to our News and Insights.
Or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram
Insurance Executive Search Consultants in USA, London and Bermuda.
Copyright Insurance Search 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
On the podcast this week, we’re delighted to launch our new Bermuda Series by interviewing Katie Partington-Howarth, Chief Capital Officer at Ariel Re
Katie talks to Nick Hoadley about:
Connect with Katie on LinkedIn or find out more about Ariel Re
The Insurance Coffee House Podcast is brought to you by Insurance Search.
We are a global Insurance Executive Search Consultancy, supporting Insurance and Insurtech businesses to attract and retain the very best insurance talent.
Find out more about showcasing your employer brand as a guest on the Insurance Coffee House Podcast or sign up to our News and Insights.
Or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram
Insurance Executive Search Consultants in USA, London and Bermuda.
Copyright Insurance Search 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
This week, we are joined by Tara Foley who shares with us her journey to becoming the CEO of AXA, UK & Ireland and her passion for making a difference.
The Insurance Coffee House Podcast is brought to you by Insurance Search.
An international Insurance Executive Search Consultancy, supporting Insurance and Insurtech businesses in the UK, Bermuda and across the United States.
Or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram
Insurance Executive Search Consultants in USA, London and Bermuda.
Copyright Insurance Search 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
On this episode we interview Jose Luis (Pepe) Velasquez and find out how he has used his experience working at blue chip companies like Heineken to drive a high-performance culture at Mapfre USA.
Connect with Pepe on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jose-luis-velasquez-906560/on LinkedIn or find out more about Mapfre USA https://www.linkedin.com/company/mapfre/
The Insurance Coffee House Podcast is brought to you by Insurance Search.
We are a global Insurance Executive Search Consultancy, supporting Insurance and Insurtech businesses to attract and retain the very best insurance talent.
Find out more about showcasing your employer brand as a guest on the Insurance Coffee House Podcast or sign up to our News and Insights.
Copyright Insurance Search 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
Or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram
Insurance Executive Search Consultants in USA, UK and Bermuda.
Zimbabwe born and South Africa educated, Warrick Beaver started his working life as an HR professional in the fashion retail industry.
“If you're talking about journeys to insurance, fashion and retail is probably as far away as you can imagine. I was taught that you were a retailer first and an HR professional second”, says Warrick.
“The lesson learned was, 'Understand where the value creation happens and be as close to it as possible. Understand your business.' That commercial curiosity has always stayed with me. It has stood me in good stead, kept me engaged and helped me find impact, meaning, and alignment throughout my career.”
On this episode of the Insurance Coffee House Podcast, Warrick delves in to his career journey and what he’s learned along his professional journey.
Through retail and recruitment industry, FMCG manufacturing and information services, Warrick shares his experiences of M&A, business divestures and balancing his commercial and HR hats.
He discusses his role of Chief People Officer and Fidelis Insurance Group’s novel operating model.
“The hypothesis was that businesses should lend themselves to their core competencies. If that core competency is underwriting, then it should focus on underwriting and ensuring a relentless pursuit of execution and excellence.
Conversely, the core competence in terms of capital management, balance sheet management, capital allocation, reserving, would also be best served if there was the same level of excellent focus and time and attention.
Decisions can then be made with the clearest of intention, and there's no potential contradiction or conflict in terms of what you do from a capital management or from an underwriting point of view, because the two businesses are managed separately. So that's the hypothesis. We are in a long-term relationship with The Fidelis Partnership. They are focusing on what they do best, and we are focusing on what we do best.”
With its growing presence in London, Dublin and Bermuda, Warrick discusses the culture at the business and whether bifurcation is a true USP to attracting top insurance talent.
“Culture is dynamic. It's ever changing. You can never put a pin in it and say, “We're done, victory is declared!” It is a constant evolution.
We also see that in terms of our demographic, our employee base and what they’re looking for from an employer and the working experience.
We've been able to assemble, very capable, experienced professionals from within the insurance market who have worked for much larger, more established organization
This model represents something novel, unique and an opportunity for them to become part of something interesting. Of course there is a lot of uncertainty with a scale operation, but we have a deep heritage. We have some fantastic experience. We're a building brand, and it's enough to attract people who are well regarded.”
Warrick emphasises what he looks for in insurance leaders coming for interview.
“It's just as much a conversation on how that technical capability, experiences and skills are translated into value added. Don't spend your time talking about your accomplishments. We're going to take those as read.”
As closing advice, Warrick says, “Understand your business. Be as close to the value-add inflection point as possible because you will feel relevant, get immediate feedback, and will be constantly evolving with the needs of the organization.”
Connect with Warrick Beaver on LinkedIn or find out more about Fidelis Insurance Group
The Insurance Coffee House Podcast is brought to you by Insurance Search.
We are a global Insurance Executive Search Consultancy, supporting Insurance and Insurtech businesses to attract and retain the very best insurance talent.
Find out more about showcasing your employer brand as a guest on the Insurance Coffee House Podcast or sign up to our News and Insights.
Copyright Insurance Search 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
Or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram
Insurance Executive Search Consultants in USA, London and Bermuda.
“Many people you'll work with and meet in business will be happy to accept information and explanations in the way it's being presented to them.
Some people you work with will have a real appetite to go one level deeper because they'll want to know the drivers of the things they are seeing.
They'll want to have a proper understanding about how that part of the business or that part of the market or that customer behaviour really works”, says Steve.
“My push would be to go one level deeper than that. When you work with people that want to understand not just the drivers but the drivers of the drivers or the footnotes of the footnotes, often that is where you find the opportunities that others have missed.
One thing I am really passionate about is some of the best opportunities exist there. It's really worth going one level deeper to not just really understand your market, but to discover things that other people haven't and in a really competitive business, those are the things that can separate you.”
On the Insurance Coffee House Podcast this week, Steve talks about how his early career working as an analyst on the equities trading floor in a Dutch investment bank, taught him about the importance of discipline and attention to detail.
“But when businesses came to see us to talk about how their business was performing, I had a real feeling of envy. I really wanted to be on the other side of the table. I wanted to be in businesses and solving the kind of problems they were solving.”
A move in to start-ups followed, providing the opportunity to work in high-performance, fast-moving environments.
“Anyone who's had a career in the early-stage part of a business, will know that you get some real successes and you get some failures along the way as well. We had both.
But I learned a huge amount, worked with some fantastic entrepreneurs and learned about thinking big.
The other thing I got to see firsthand, that value can be created out of thin air. Working in a successful start-up or scale up will really teach you to see that with your own eyes and to know it can be done is quite a powerful thing to experience. It gives you a lot of confidence for the future.”
Moving in to product leadership and general management roles at bigger, more mature businesses took Steve on a journey to joining insurance price comparison business Confused.com as COO in 2019, before becoming CEO in 2023.
Steve reflects on his leadership journey, saying:
“I used to look at my career path almost like a game of Trivial Pursuit, where you were trying to collect all the skills that you needed to be the ‘rounded leader’.
You’d go around the board, collect those wedges and when you had them all, you could move to the centre, and that's the game complete.
But unlike trivial pursuit, when you move to the middle, you don't win the game, you just discover there's a whole new game below, and you start again.
I realised that it’s going to be an infinite journey. Instead of just accepting it, it’s really learning to love the experience of learning new things.”
In this podcast episode, Steve talks to host Nick Hoadley about:
“Whatever your career goals are, be open to the fact that the moment you hit them, there'll be a whole new mountain to climb. Learn to love that. Get yourself into the frame of mind of enjoying the journey.”
Connect with Steve Dukes on LinkedIn or find out more about careers at Confused.com
The Insurance Coffee House Podcast is brought to you by Insurance Search.
We are a global Insurance Executive Search Consultancy, supporting Insurance and Insurtech businesses to attract and retain the very best insurance talent.
Find out more about showcasing your employer brand as a guest on the Insurance Coffee House Podcast or sign up to our News and Insights.
Or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram
Insurance Executive Search Consultants in USA, London and Bermuda.
Copyright Insurance Search 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
“DE&I is one of the biggest challenges for the industry. For a lot of our clients in the US, it's one of their biggest priorities”, says Nick
"Before we engage with a client, we really want to make sure they're set up for diverse candidates. It's so important for us as an insurance executive search firm, that if we move someone who's very successful into a new environment, that they're going to be set up for success there.
And that internally, there are no barriers and people will have the same opportunity across the board.
For us as a search firm, it's key for our processes to be as transparent and inclusive as possible.
When we’re working on a mandate, rather than just going to a little book of contacts, that we actually do a thorough market mapping to identify every single person who could potentially do that role.
What that gives us is a more diverse talent pool. The shortlist of candidates we provide is more diverse. When you've got more people in that process, you can scrutinize those candidates more and end up with a better-quality hire.”
On the podcast this week, Nick shares his journey from corporate law to insurance broker to founding global insurance executive search consultancy, Insurance Search.
“I was working for an insurance company. We were looking to hire great quality people, but were really struggling to get the candidates.
I was working with some of the agencies, seeing some of the CV s that were coming in. It could be quite depressing and just thought, there's an opportunity here. I backed myself that I could do better.
I've always been a real people person, helping people in whatever way I can. It just seemed like a really natural fit, putting businesses together with great insurance talent.”
Nick highlights the challenges to launching an executive search consultancy and how he’s coped with adversity along the away.
“We're still very fresh from it, the pandemic. We were doing very nicely as a firm, working with lots of good insurance companies who were expanding.
But then the pandemic came along and the world changed.
We went from all of our clients actively hiring multiple positions to pretty much zero overnight.
That was a real trauma. But it gave me the opportunity to really reflect and decide where I wanted to take the business.
We’d been doing quite a lot of senior, international work at the time, but we are also still doing some quite junior insurance roles, which was an area we weren’t enjoying as much.
And so, we pivoted and really focused at the senior end of things.”
Nick discusses the motivation behind launching the Insurance Coffee House Podcast as a way to highlight the breadth of opportunity across the insurance sector, and to learn from the experiences of C-level insurance leaders.
He emphasizes the executive search, human capital consultancy and market intelligence services Insurance Search provides, both to global insurance brands as well as smaller, mid-market businesses.
“Our core service is insurance executive search and finding senior leaders for insurance companies.
As part of that work, we have a human capital consultancy where we very much look to align ourselves with our clients. Where they are as a business now and work with them to achieve those strategic objectives and where they want to be in 18 months, two years, five years.
And we offer insurance market intelligence studies.
We've got a great team of researchers, who are looking externally for our clients at what their competitors are doing, how those competitors are being successful, looking at some of the aspirational businesses that they want to be like in 24 to 36 months.”
With Insurance Search seeking to make executive search more accessible, Nick highlights the types of roles the team works on.
“As well as C-level positions, we also work on business-critical roles. They might be middle management or upper middle management positions which larger search firms may overlook. They’re roles that are critical to those businesses and they're often some of the hardest positions to fill.
We feel that our methodology and the way we work, is a real benefit to those insurance companies.”
Nick emphasizes why he’s driven not only to help insurance businesses succeed, but also the individuals within those businesses.
“We always say we have two clients. We've got the company itself. But number secondly, is very much around the people we're working with. The Chief HR Officer, the COO or the CEO, they want to be successful in their particular roles.
We align ourselves with them and really figure out what's the biggest problem they're facing and how can we provide a solution.”
Nick shares how the Insurance Search team are supporting candidates to develop in their insurance careers, by opening up introductions through to the firm’s insurance network and Leadership Advisory Service.
He emphasizes the values that underpin Insurance Search’s core offer – honesty, integrity, excellence and transparency – and why he’s looking for high-performing insurance leaders to join the team.
“We look to hire in people to our organisation, who are insurance industry experts. People who are actually working in the industry as an executive or a leader. Whether they're from underwriting or broking, we feel they can add a lot of value.
We've got a team of highly experienced executive search consultants in the UK and then we have our managing partners who are based in different parts of the world, in the US primarily and in Bermuda. People who are very credible, who've got great relationships and are culturally aligned with us as well.
It’s a real opportunity for them to leverage their network.”
As advice for insurance leaders seeking a new opportunity or when preparing for an interview, Nick says, “Be hungry and know the value you can bring.”
And as for people leaders and insurance talent acquisition professionals, Nick emphasizes that it’s all about the process.
“Make sure that your hiring process is inclusive and attracts the greatest number of candidates.
You're under pressure when you've only got one or two candidates in the mix to choose from. Open up that pool. Try to take anything out of the job specification that doesn't need to be there to encourage more diverse candidates to apply.”
Find out more about Insurance Search or connect with Nick Hoadley on LinkedIn or email [email protected]
The Insurance Coffee House Podcast is brought to you by Insurance Search.
We are a global Insurance Executive Search Consultancy, supporting Insurance and Insurtech businesses to attract and retain the very best insurance talent.
Find out more about showcasing your employer brand as a guest on the Insurance Coffee House Podcast or sign up to our News and Insights.
Or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram
Insurance Executive Search Consultants in USA, UK and Bermuda.
Copyright Insurance Search 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
“The strength of our culture was something we used in the presentations to analysts and investors”, says Daniel.
“We did some work around our employee value proposition and we asked our colleagues, ‘Why do you work at Hamilton?’
The common theme was collaboration and that's how we came up with the phrase ‘In good company’.
As part of the IPO, we used it as our overall company tagline to say, ‘You're in good company with Hamilton, whether you're a client, broker, stakeholder or investor.’”
On the Insurance Coffee House Podcast, Daniel shares his career journey from the NatWest graduate programme, his varied roles at Munich Re to joining Hamilton Insurance Group six years ago.
He talks about the transition from a larger, more corporate environment to starting his current role at Hamilton, with 120 people and $500m in premium in 2018.
“Joining Hamilton, I was excited for the opportunity to be at a company, almost at its start and helping it build. It's very different to being at a large organisation. What excites people about joining Hamilton is that you feel you can move the needle.”
The business has subsequently grown to 550+ employees, with $2bn in premium and listed on the NYSE in November 2023.
Daniel gives an overview of the core functions of the business today and his role of overseeing the HR function, internal and external communications, as well as developing the strength of culture Hamilton has become known for.
“We firmly believe that having a strong culture is critical and a component of our overall underwriting success.
Engaged employees are an essential part of Hamilton's success. They drive productivity and innovation, that will lead to the ultimate success of the company.”
Daniel explains how Hamilton’s values of ‘Be smart, Be sensible, Be open, Be more’ underpin activity around recruitment, performance management and talent management, as well as the key role communication plays.
Regular town halls at both group and local level, together with ‘Hamilton on a page’ lays out strategy and helps employees understand current performance and achieve our business imperatives of sustainable underwriting profit, strategic growth, technology enablement and being a magnet for talent.
Daniel highlights the importance of collaboration and how the outcomes of staff surveys help address any team concerns.
He shares his advice for leaders coming to interview at Hamilton and advises his insurance industry HR peers not to rush the hiring process if they’re unsure of a candidate, but to move with haste if they are.
Daniel explains Hamilton’s DEI statement, ‘Open minds open doors’ and how welcoming and respecting differences, helps attract and retain the best talent.
“We embrace all forms of diversity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, but gender has been something we’re particularly proud of what we've been able to achieve.
Of our total employee base, 45% are female. 36% of our Underwriting leads and Claims leads are female. There's always room for growth, but we're extremely proud of that progress we've been able to make in that area.”
Daniel stresses the key leadership roles and influence of Pina Albo, Anita Kuchma, Megan Thomas and Gemma Carreiro at executive level.
“Pina is the first female CEO of a Bermuda-based company to ring the New York Stock Exchange bell and Hamilton was the first woman-led insurance company to go public in 20 years.”
Daniel emphasizes what he looks for an in an insurance executive search partner, including trust and third-party perspectives and insights.
He concludes by adding the one lesson his career has taught him, he thinks everyone should know.
“There are always other forms of information that come through to you as a professional, but having good, solid data to help you make decisions is such an important component.
The second aspect is the people. It all comes down to having a good culture and good people around you, with the right attitude and the right approach. We spend a lot of time at work, we want to work in good company.”
Connect with Daniel Fisher on LinkedIn or find out more about Hamilton Insurance Group
The Insurance Coffee House Podcast is hosted by Nick Hoadley, CEO of Insurance Search.
We are a global Insurance Executive Search Consultancy, supporting Insurance and Insurtech businesses to attract and retain the very best insurance talent.
Find out more about showcasing your employer brand as a guest on the Insurance Coffee House Podcast or sign up to our News and Insights.
Copyright Insurance Search 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
Or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram
Insurance Executive Search Consultants in USA, UK and Bermuda.
“In our experience, a reinsurance deal was being profiled in a physical binder full of paper. I thought, ‘How good would it be if we could take risk or bundles of risk and make a profile for it’", says Ben.
"Think of all the information that you could attach to that profile. That was a very early concept. For a long time we debated, how this would work in the reinsurance world where we've got all these different parties with vested interests, and deals they like doing in a very particular way, with a very particular workflow.
We just iterated and iterated on how you could create a system whereby these buyers, brokers, reinsurers could exchange profiles of the deals that they wanted to do.”
On the Insurance Coffee House Podcast, two of Supercede’s co-founders, Ben Rose and Jerad Leigh, talk about their early career journeys and realisation of the breadth of opportunity within the insurance industry.
They discuss the inspiration for launching Supercede, the mountain of iteration and calibrating constantly around the different elements, features and parts of the work flows within reinsurance deals.
“We have a very mission driven culture. There such an obvious problem we're trying to solve. We're not inventing something for the sake of inventing it. We're not pursuing something, because it sounded nice.
We've got a thing that everybody in reinsurance universally hates and wishes was better.”
5x growth over the past 12 months, has put Supercede on track to triple again this year, with new clients, investors and top talent joining the team.
Ben and Jerad explain the benefits and efficiencies Supercede offers to all stakeholders within reinsurance deals and their desire to create modern tools to free people up to do what they’re good at.
“People want technology. It’s really important to have modern tools to free up the talent at a broker or underwriter so they can do the jobs they're actually meant to be doing and not the sort of janitorial work instead”, says Ben
Attracting the right talent is critical for business growth and Jerad explains what they look for when hiring.
“Testing for culture is obviously really important. People who are familiar and comfortable working at a company of this size.
But I think it's really important to test for people who are principled thinkers. You have to have people who are willing and able to look at the variety of challenges that are being brought to the business and the factors that are involved and make decisions based on principles of what is best and most important and most thoughtful at that time.
Certainly, a don't hire assholes rule should apply, because when you're sub 50-100 people, bad individuals or people who don't really fit can bleed across the organisation.
You have to be very thoughtful in those first 25-50 hires, making sure you're retaining a quality of character.
You have to be intentional, to phrase and present questions that are trying to root out what you're looking to solve for.
Over the last half dozen years or so, there's a real belief that people can thrive in an environment that's a start-up.
Some people can, and some people can’t. You have to identify what you're trying to test for and present questions and case studies through your hiring process that will allow you to distil down to the individuals that actually can thrive.”
Highlighting which other insurtech businesses inspire them, Jerad cites hyperexponential as a prime example.
“I think their team does a great job. I really rate how they hire and how they set roles for the things that they're trying to solve for.
Like us, they're taking a core problem that sits within the underwriting units of businesses and giving tools to help those underwriters do that work more effectively.
There's this concept or fallacy of, ‘If you build it, they will come’. A lot of software companies can get overly focused on building something that's cool rather than something that's impactful”
One lesson Jerad’s career has taught him is that people often overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in five.
“When you start a business, you're obviously incredibly ambitious, and you're going to accomplish every goal you could ever conceive of in the first six months.
You have to take a longer term, patient approach, knowing you're on the right path, so when you get to the four or five year time horizon, you're actually really impressed by how far you've come.”
As for the future of Supercede, Ben says,
“We've got a really healthy number of large customers, depending on us. We want to do a brilliant job for them.
But of course, we'd like to expand to more customers in the process as well. Every new customer we bring on brings new ideas for the product, helps us improve it for everybody.
We're at a stage where we can double down on what we've got and make it truly the best offering for reinsurance people from a technology standpoint.”
Connect with Ben Rose and Jerad Leigh on LinkedIn or find out more about Supercede
The Insurance Coffee House Podcast is hosted by Nick Hoadley, CEO of Insurance Search.
We are a global Insurance Executive Search Consultancy, supporting Insurance and Insurtech businesses to attract and retain the very best insurance talent.
Find out more about showcasing your employer brand as a guest on the Insurance Coffee House Podcast or sign up to our News and Insights.
Copyright Insurance Search 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
Or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram
Insurance Executive Search Consultants in UK, USA and Bermuda.
The podcast currently has 207 episodes available.
226,060 Listeners