Writing about London market reform reminds me of the famous sketch in the Monty Python film The Life of Brian in which the revolutionaries of the Judean People’s Front (or was it the People’s Front of Judea?) plot the overthrow of the imperial Roman oppressor and the foundation of an independent Israeli state in a radical, subversive meeting.
The trouble with regulation is that its three main pillars – conduct, prudence and competition – are in a rock, paper, scissors relationship with each other.
It is easy for senior management to get so caught up in the minutiae of managing their businesses that they forget the importance of their company having a strong narrative.
Markets behave in brutal and slightly crazy ways that don’t always best serve the end consumer. They always undershoot on the downside and then overshoot on the upside – sometimes hugely and irrationally so.
You will doubtless have seen the amazing but terrifying picture of a throng of climbers lining up patiently to make their ascent of the peak of Mount Everest doing the rounds of social media over the past few weeks.
Before rock survivor Ozzy Osbourne was fully rehabilitated and had his star re-cast via reality TV – that is to say at the end of the decade he had spent as a genuine has-been – he featured in a low-budget UK documentary looking at his extraordinary career.
After the KRW storms of 2005, I remember interviewing a top reinsurance broker and making the casual remark that the major spike in property cat pricing must be making his bosses very happy. I envisioned bulging brokerage accounts and big bonuses all round at year end.
Just outside the gothic towers of Notre Dame cathedral is the point from which all trunk roads in France are measured. It is known as kilometre zero and marks the centre of the country’s political geography.
When I am interviewing prospective new reporters, I always make sure I counter any lingering impression they may have that a career in insurance journalism is going to be in any way boring.
A highlight of last week’s packed Insider London conference came when former Catlin COO Paul Jardine was asked a question from the floor about whether he felt his erstwhile colleagues (taken to mean Stephen Catlin and Paul Brand) were “crazy” to be capital-raising for a major new (re)insurance venture in today’s market.
Normally we ration ourselves to one conference a year where London (re)insurance market folk talk about parochial London problems. Once a year feels about right to bring out some of the old chestnuts of Lime Street politics and give them a good roasting. We usually do this at our November London Market conference.
I’m sure you’ve heard the classic apocryphal comic tale of the building worker’s sick note, long since immortalised into Irish folk music by The Dubliners as ‘The Reason Why Paddy’s Not at Work Today’.
Artificial intelligence may drive many of the (re)insurance industry’s functions in years to come, but hiring top talent alongside it will be key to the sector’s future success.
When reinsurers are too big it is their cedants that can suffer, but when the buyers are too big it is the reinsurers that are squeezed by the asymmetrical relationship.
There has never been a better time to be an insurance journalist – the sculpture that we are circling is evolving at such a rate that by the time we have completed a full circuit, it has changed.
Ten years ago, I walked into The Insurance Insider office for the first time, flagrantly breaking the first commandment of insurance journalism: never start a new job the week before Monte Carlo.
The popular BBC motoring programme Top Gear’s special editions see a trio of presenters embark to often inhospitable parts of the globe to complete audacious competitive challenges in budget cars.
On February 26 2016 we published the story “Sciemus CEO Finn Dismissed”. The story asserted that Andre Finn did not have a background in insurance when in fact he had been a senior executive at the company since its foundation in 2002. We are happy to make this clarification.
Once upon a time insurance was a brilliant, original idea. Money was paid in return for the transfer of a risk, mainly between wealthy merchants who knew and trusted one another.
If you were to throw a rock in the air on Lime Street and ask the person it hits to name two of the best CEOs of London market carriers, there is a high probability that Bronek Masojada and Andrew Horton would be very well represented.
Finally it has come to a stop. The goose has been cooked. The canary has croaked. The party is over. The fat lady has sung and the curtain has come down.
If Lloyd's aggregate results were not already shock enough, yesterday's exclusive revelation that MS Amlin was a £1.4bn ($2bn) capacity outlier within that £33bn whole ripped down Lime Street like a lightning bolt.