Risk, Liability & Event Insurance with Freddie Sparrow

What happens when a music festival founder becomes an insurance entrepreneur?

Freddie Sparrow is the co-founder of Vento Insurance, a specialist event insurance broker serving festival organisers, conferences, trade shows and the wider events supply chain. Before launching Vento, Freddie ran a 5,000-person music festival — managing venues, contractors, ticket sales, cashflow, weather risk and the legal responsibility of thousands of attendees.

In this episode of Humanizing Insurance, we explore the real risks behind live events and how those experiences led Freddie into underwriting, broking and eventually building an event insurance business.

We cover:

• Event insurance and cancellation risk
• Public liability insurance for festivals and live events
• Cashflow, ticket sales and operational exposure
• Weather risk and “acts of God”
• Underwriting vs broking — what’s the difference?
• COVID cancellations and the underinsurance gap in the events industry
• Building a specialist insurance startup

Freddie’s journey runs from music promoter to reinsurer at TransRe, broker at Acrisure, and now founder of Vento Insurance — bringing discipline, lived experience and trust to a sector that learned the hard way what happens when coverage isn’t in place.

If you work in insurance, event management, live production, risk management or are building a business in a volatile industry, this conversation will resonate.

Because whether you’re running a festival or an insurance company, one truth remains:

The show must go on.

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.

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