The Voice of Insurance

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...

I really enjoyed today’s interview because it outlines what is quite an original proposition in a very competitive marketplace. Jonathan Tritton is the Managing Director of Burns & Wilcox Global Solutions, which is the London and International wholesale broking arm of the US-headquartered Kaufman Group. The group has been formed via the coming together of the Chesterfield and Lochain Patrick broking businesses. So far, ...

Today’s podcast is all about catching up with a business that was last on the show five years ago. And we’ve got an awful lot of catching up to do. Back then Carbon Underwriting was on the show because it was one of the first crop of Syndicates in a Box at Lloyd’s, laying out interesting ideas on how to modernise and optimise the underwriting of delegated authority business. Now it has matured into a carrier with ...

Today’s podcast is a first for the Voice of Insurance as this is the first time I have had an interview with a sitting Lady Mayor of London. Sue Langley or, the Right Honourable, the Lady Mayor, Dame Susan Langley, DBE, to give her her full and formal title, has worked in the insurance industry for 28 years, with senior roles at Hiscox, within the Corporation of Lloyd’s and latterly as Chair of the board of Gallagher U...

Today’s episode is unique because my guest is pretty unique. Gabriel Holschneider was working as a lawyer 20 years ago when he uncovered a passion for, and an obsession with, captive insurance and started a consultancy and a very small reinsurer with his own money. Then ten years ago he founded an MGA group called XS Global. In 2026 that group is the biggest MGA in Latin America, is fully globalising and is set to write ov...

When the well-known banker J.P. Morgan was asked by a reporter to predict the future of the stock market, he gave this now-famous three-word reply: “It will fluctuate”. Here was someone wise enough to know that making predictions is a hazardous occupation at the best of times, and doubly so if those predictions relate to often fragile and volatile financial markets. But what the evasive and inscrutable Mr Morgan perhap...