The Voice of Insurance

Today’s Episode is a catch-up with two reinsurance brokers back on the podcast after an absence of over two-and-a-half years. That’s long enough for most guests, but for an executive team that has been building out a Reinsurance broking operation in earnest for only a little longer than this podcast has been in existence, it’s an age. Since we last spoke Tim Gardner Global CEO, and Bob Bisset, CEO North America a...

I’m really happy about today’s podcast and that’s because today’s guest is a shining example of a new, very well-prepared generation of leaders that is coming through the ranks in the international insurance sector. With senior roles in the company market and inside Lloyd’s itself Stephanie Ogden was already well-rounded before she took on her current role as the CEO of the Munich Re Syndicate at Lloy...

Everyone who works in the Insurance Industry knows it is a great business. The great cliché is that people fall into the sector via all sorts of roundabout routes and then they stay. They rarely pick the industry as a first choice. But once in there are many amazing benefits that take new entrants by surprise. In the UK the vibrant national and regional professional communities facilitated by a great institutions such as the CII,...

Today’s podcast is a masterclass with an expert in a class of business that has exploded with growth over the past decade. M&A insurance is a broad church that holds a large number of products that are all related to inter-company transactions. Representations and Warranties, potential tax liabilities, litigation risk and other contingencies related to M&A are the subject of this incredibly innovative segment of ins...

It’s been three years since today’s guest has been on the show. In that time the business he runs has doubled in size through a combination of organic growth and targeted acquisitions. Group CEO of Miller Insurance Services, James Hands, is looking for growth at a similar pace for the next three years and this interview is an excellent 360-degree guide to how he plans to achieve his goals. A focus on specialty insuran...

In insurance we usually spend a lot more time talking about innovation than we end up doing it. So this podcast focuses on two of the do-ers putting innovation into practice. It’s now ten years since Hiscox launched its market-first, tech-enabled, live quote and bind FloodPlus product and this Episode examines the story of that product’s development and its growth into a market opportunity that was primed for expansio...

Today’s podcast is one of those conversations that stretched my ability to keep up with my interviewee to the limit. Andrew Johnston is the Global Head of Insurtech at Gallagher Re and has been at the forefront of understanding and chronicling the Insurtech phenomenon since it emerged over ten years ago. Gallagher Re’s quarterly reports on the topic have been required reading over the past decade for anyone wanting to...

In insurance we love to divide ourselves into different mutually-exclusive tribes. Life and non-life, property and casualty, marine and non-marine. Long and short tail Traditional balance sheet reinsurance and Insurance-Linked Securities. And not forgetting - live and legacy. But the fact is that as the global insurance ecosystem becomes more sophisticated there are really only two major differences. Different types of insurance ...

Today’s guest is running a global reinsurer with bold ambitions to double in size over the next five years. Nick Hankin is Managing Director of QBE Re. Now into his fourth decade in insurance and reinsurance, Nick has market experience in abundance, so when, despite the recent relatively rapid softening in the reinsurance market at the most recent renewals, he says he still sees plenty of opportunity for profitable growth, w...

I first met today’s guest just under 34 years ago on my first day at work in the London Market. Back then Alfonso Valera and I worked in the London-based Lloyd’s subsidiary of the biggest broker in Spain. Alfonso was my senior and had already been in post for a year and patiently helped show me the ropes. He spoke perfect English, was a confident, skilful and forceful negotiator who was incredibly passionate about the ...

Patrick Tiernan has come into the CEO role at Lloyd’s with the market brimming with confidence after a third successive year of strong profitability. Now that competitive forces are reasserting themselves with renewed vigour, the question is what next? From this meeting the future at Lloyd’s is one full of increased velocity and innovation in all things. New leadership, new forms of underwriting, new targets and ambit...

The great cliché about our sector is that while business trends come and go – it’s the people who remain the constant. Today’s guest is someone whose business follows this philosophy to the letter. Dan Topping is the CEO of London-focused, publicly-listed private equity firm B.P. Marsh with just under 20 years in the business. The firm he leads is a household name in the London Market with a 30-year often idiosy...

The growth of the portfolio solutions segment of the market has been one of the most exciting and interesting developments in global insurance in the past five years. The streamlining of placements in syndicated insurance markets is producing scale, speed efficiency and cost benefits for underwriters, brokers and their clients alike. And this is a phenomenon that is really only just getting into its stride. Billions of dollars of...

Todays’ podcast with Scott Egan is a tour de force. I think there are various reasons for that. The first is that whereas when we first spoke in 2023, Scott was relatively new in the CEO role at SiriusPoint and his strategy hadn’t had time to bed in and take full effect, now we were speaking after a year when the business had posted another set of consistently strong results and any talk of a turnaround was clearly a ...

Today’s guest is the CEO of an $8bn GWP global insurance business. Ivan Gonzalez has spent 25 years travelling the world within the Swiss Re organisation, from his native Colombia to New York and China. He now runs Swiss Re Corporate Solutions. After undergoing a turnaround process a few years ago this is an organisation that has regained its strategic direction and confidence and is now posting combined ratios in the 80s. ...

Today’s guest is Richard Milner, CEO of Chaucer Group. Chaucer is a global specialty insurance and reinsurance institution with a great pedigree and significant scale, both inside and outside the Lloyd’s market. Richard is coming up for two years in post as CEO and is beginning to make his mark on the business’s long-term strategy. Richard has had the sort of underwriting career that makes him a very relatable ...

Today’s guest is one of the best qualified people in the London Market. In a thirty-year career he has been a senior executive right at the top of Lloyd’s and has either chaired or sat on the board of almost all the institutions that underpin the market and represent it to the outside world. Today Sean McGovern is the CEO of UK & Lloyd’s at AXA XL and has just taken over the Chairmanship of the Lloyd’s...

As regular listeners will know, the Voice of Insurance usually interviews people from the global wholesale, speciality insurance and reinsurance end of the market, insuring the type of risks that tend to have to cross borders to find the right type of coverage. Today’s podcast is a slight departure from the norm because I am talking to someone who is working in the general insurance space in the UK. But they are doing so fr...

Today’s podcast is with the CEO of a reinsurer that wrote just under $8 billion dollars of Gross premiums in 2025. Miguel Rosa runs Mapfre Re, a Global Top-20 reinsurer with a reputation for long-term strategic thinking and consistency in an often unstable market. As the reinsurance market softens, at a significantly faster rate than many reinsurers were expecting, it is fascinating to hear Miguel’s view on the prospe...