Insurance news

Here’s how Allianz’s businesses in the UK performed during FY21:

	Total revenue 2021	Total revenue 2020	Variance
Allianz Holdings	£ 3,893m	£ 4,018m	-3.1%
Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS)	£ 1,137m	£ 932m	+22.0%
Euler Hermes	£ 186m	£ 186m	+0.2%
Allianz Partners	£ 203m	£ 174m	+16.5%
Total	£ 5,419m	£ 5,310m	+2.0%

Allianz explained that AGCS’s growth was thanks to good rate momentum in the market and strong new business, with financial lines, energy & construction and entertainment driving the business.

Allianz Partners remained resilient due to improved economic conditions and new client wins. At the same time, Euler Hermes achieved strong retention rates in its trade credit insurance business, with top-line development limited by the low-insolvency environment.

Chris Townsend, member of the board of management of Allianz SE, commented that Allianz continued to grow its property and casualty (P&C) business in relevant markets across the globe, with the UK operations’ latest financial results making it a key market for the group and indicating that it is well-positioned for profitable growth.

“This success is based on a clear customer focus and excellent portfolio management,” Townsend added.

Meanwhile, Allianz Holdings saw a slight decline in total revenue from the previous year due to the soft motor market’s impact on the premium income for its books’ commercial and personal sides. However, it improved profitability across its diverse and resilient portfolio, with a 9.4% increase in operating profit to £318 million for the full year ending December 31, 2021. In addition, its combined operating ratio improved by 1.2 percentage points to 93.2%, although its gross written premium (GWP) fell slightly to £3.8 billion.

Commenting on Allianz Holdings’ latest numbers, Allianz Holdings CEO Colm Holmes said: “The figures we are releasing today show that Allianz continues to deliver strong results, even in the most difficult of market conditions. We know that 2021 was another tough year for people and businesses as the pandemic continued to impact every aspect of our day-to-day life, but we have been there to support our customers when they needed us the most. Our results show the importance of having a balanced portfolio of business across personal and commercial lines, through direct and intermediated channels, as well as having the technical expertise to steer our way through turbulent market conditions.”

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AXA XL has announced the appointment of Pat Dougherty as global head of commercial bonds. In his new role, Dougherty will set the strategic direction for the commercial bonds team, manage the profitable growth of the portfolio and collaborate with AXA XL’s client management team, zonal product leaders and the Americas Specialty team.

Dougherty succeeds Maria Duhart, who now serves as AXA XL chief underwriting officer for specialty niche, Americas.

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Mallaby, whose impressive credentials include stints at Allianz, Aviva and Zurich, noted that in previous roles she got a chance to see how AXA works from the outside looking in and to admire the strength of its global brand and reach. As a group, she said, AXA has communicated powerful messages around climate change, sustainability, and diversity and inclusion, and has backed that up by taking action that reflects the role an insurance company has to play in the wider world. It’s a value statement that closely aligns with her own ethos and approach.

“I’ve joined at a time when it’s very exciting and very positive,” she said. “We’re investing heavily in a new transformational programme which is not just about IT. Though that is what is going to facilitate further improvements in products and services, it’s also about our people development. It’s a busy agenda with a lot of great topics and, as a result, I’ve met lots of people within the business that perhaps if we weren’t having such a period of transformation I might have not met yet. So, I’ve got a very blocked out diary and it’s all going very well.”

Within her role at AXA UK, Mallaby is leading 12 commercial branches with responsibilities around distribution, managing broker partnerships and heading up sales and underwriting teams to deliver for those brokers – in particular for mid-market and mid-corporate customers. Operating from a regional footprint in insurance markets up and down the country is the exciting bit, she said, as in addition to managing the P&L and delivering great service – her role hinges on getting out and talking to brokers to understand their needs and wants.

In previous roles, Mallaby’s responsibilities have centred around building and maintaining great relationships with broker partners – which was reflected in the warm reception that her move to AXA and the implicit promise she would still be serving the broking sector. It was very humbling to receive such a great response, it was even a little overwhelming, she said, and she’s delighted that with restrictions lifted, she will have the opportunity to get back out into the market and meet brokers face-to-face one more.

“I think now more than ever, we succeed best and our brokers succeed best when we’ve got strong relationships,” she said. “I think over the years, while relationships have always been important, they’ve really come to the fore in recent times, through the COVID experience and going forward, having strong relationships is going to be absolutely vital to being successful in this market.

“Brokers are my core focus, and the diary is very busy with lots of meetings scheduled. Because, particularly when you’re new to a business and you’re looking to build a rapport or discuss major topics such as plans for 2022, while you can do it by Teams or on the phone, it’s just not as creative and it’s not as collaborative. You can’t beat sitting face to face with someone and having a good chat.”

Read more: “We will have work to do to prove why insurance is still relevant and important”

From ongoing conversations with broker partners, however, Mallaby highlighted that the COVID-19 situation had placed new value placed on in-person meetings. Brokers are happy to meet face-to-face, she said, but only when the meetings have a real purpose and are required. Otherwise, they’re equally happy using technology or blending the two approaches to find a hybrid model that works well for all the involved parties.

This is understandable considering how accessible certain technologies have become over the last year and, looking at how AXA responded to the crisis, she noted it was “remarkable” how the organisation managed to transform itself overnight. Mallaby received a full blast of just how well AXA adapted to remote working through her own onboarding experience – which went far more smoothly than could be expected.

Now the insurer is increasing its digital capabilities by rolling a huge investment around smart working to enable its colleagues to work seamlessly at home and in the office. In addition to those meetings, both in-person and remote, Mallaby and the AXA UK team will be attending a lot of network events and conferences, as well as hosting a range of hospitality events to help build and evolve relationships and connections.

“Going forward and looking at the short term, the number one goal for my team this quarter is to be very visible and active in the market,” she said. “[With restrictions] lifting, we’re certainly seeing London getting very busy so I think we’ll all be out in force in the next few weeks.”

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Miller’s career to date can be broadly split into three key parts, with his first 20 years spent amassing underwriting and management experience in a variety of composite companies. This period of time saw him take on positions with Norwich Union (now Aviva) and then later in two Lloyd’s service companies at a time when Lloyd’s syndicates were first exploring pushing out into the regional market.

“Then the second part of my career, the last 14 years, has been more around leadership, with QBE and CNA Hardy,” he said. “The first four years saw me based in Scotland but the last 10 have been national roles. Five of those years were with QBE and saw me running all the business outside of London – at its peak, it was eight regional offices and 220 staff. When I took on the business it was about £180 million GWP and when I left it was about £415 million so, we’d grown into a very profitable business.

“Then at CNA, I was brought in to build out their regional proposition. I opened offices for them, attracted staff and turned around what was a failing regional business. I grew that from £17 million GWP to £80 million over that period of time, and, in 2018 and 2019, we had combined ratios in the 80s and a really good, profitable business.”

Amid the variety of roles Miller has carried out across the insurance market, his position with Gallagher (which is subject to routine regulatory approvals) offers the third arm of his career as it is his first real foray into broking. He highlighted that he is looking forward to taking on a completely new challenge in a new environment. When the opportunity to join Gallagher emerged, he said, he was already familiar with the strength of its team and its reputation in the market so it was an easy decision.

That his new position would allow him to be based on his home turf again after 10 years travelling up and down between London and Glasgow certainly didn’t hamper his enthusiasm either. From his experience, Elliot said, the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North-East of England tend to be quite similar in temperament and approach, and he enjoys working with them, so he is delighted at the prospect of getting his feet on the ground and speaking with clients face to face once more.

As regional MD for Gallagher, Elliot has a range of pressing responsibilities – first and foremost of which is to manage the successful growth and profitability of the region which comes with five offices and about 220 colleagues. Coming into any new business, he said, the first point of order is to meet the people you will be working with and get to grips with how the business is run.

Read more: Gallagher discusses the challenges facing regional brokers

“So, I will be looking at every aspect of the business that’s within my control – from clients, to people, to processes and, of course, our partnerships with insurers,” he said. “Primarily, right now it’s about doing a lot of listening and taking the time to understand the business, and getting to know the people that I’m working with. It has been great. I’ve already done a fair amount of travelling and will continue to do so, and everyone has been very welcoming.”

Elliot has got to know some of his new colleagues in previous roles but he noted that he has been very impressed by the calibre of talent within his team and their positivity about Gallagher itself and the wider market. That energy and enthusiasm are great to see, he said, and he looks forward to utilising their expertise as he settles into the role.

It’s certainly going to be a busy year, he said, but he relishes the opportunity ahead to really build out the brand of Gallagher in the region and foster greater awareness of the value proposition it holds for clients. Additionally, he will be looking to recruit new team members, which serves as a reflection of Gallagher’s commitment to investing in new talent as well as nurturing existing colleagues.

“There’s a lot to be done but I’m very much looking forward to it all,” he said. “I suspect the weeks will fly and the months will fly, and I’ll get to the end of the year and think ‘wow, where did the time go?’ Certainly, the weeks I’ve been here so far has just gone in the blink of an eye. I sincerely hope, but I’m also absolutely sure, I’ll look back at this year at the end of it and think ‘that was a brilliant year, look at what we’ve done.’”

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The deal will see renewals transfer to AXA Commercial from June 2022. As part of the transaction, Ageas UK will continue to manage and provide ongoing service across all policies until they are underwritten by AXA Commercial at renewal. Meanwhile, AXA Commercial, alongside Ageas UK, will work closely alongside brokers to make sure great customer outcomes continue to be delivered.

The acquisition does not include the back book, which will remain with Ageas UK.

Commenting on the deal, Jon Walker, chief executive officer, AXA Commercial, said it was a positive step in the growth of the commercial business and further cemented AXA Commercial’s commitment to the SME and schemes market segments.

“I look forward to welcoming the new members of the AXA Commercial team and the additional underwriting and operational expertise they bring,” he said. “AXA is committed to being a partner of choice for our customers both by continuing to strengthen our business, and by developing new propositions, designed to respond to customer needs.”

In a separate release, Ageas UK said that the sale was aligned to its ongoing strategy of focusing time and investment on growing its intermediated lines business where it has a “strong heritage and market-leading experience”. CEO of Ageas UK, Ant Middle, noted the sale was an important step in that strategy and that while the insurer had “modestly grown” in commercial lines over the last few years, its focus is now elsewhere.

“I’m pleased that, through this deal, we’ve enabled continued employment for our people who will transfer to AXA, an organisation well-placed to support our people, brokers and their clients in the future management of this business,” Middle said. “We’re proud of the commercial lines expertise we have developed in this team, and in announcing this next step for Ageas in the UK, I would like to thank our people, brokers and suppliers for their invaluable support in building this business with us over the last few years.” 

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Edgeley noted that his early conversations with former chief executive Howard Lickens, who has now taken on the role of executive chairman, really felt like a meeting of minds. Having steered Clear Group for over 20 years, deciding who would take over the reins as CEO was a serious consideration for Lickens, and also for Edgeley who had a clear image of what he wanted from his next role. He knew he wanted to be part of a business wherein entrepreneurship and an appetite for growth were comfortably synonymous with a flexible management structure.

“I turned up in January last year and it was interesting joining in the midst of lockdown,” he said. “So, my first two to three months were spent remotely meeting everybody in the business and actually what that meant was that you met everybody very quickly because you weren’t driving [around the country] to meet the teams…

“The big thing about Clear is its culture, and I think we really differentiate the type of business that we are and how we do business by that culture. So me coming on board and understanding the business and its culture was probably the most important thing in those first few months because, frankly, you just can’t put any plans in place without thoroughly understanding how the business operates and the way it wants to continue moving forward.”

With that in place, by the end of about Q1 2021, Edgeley said, he and the Clear team refreshed and rejigged a structured plan for the next two to three years that will ensure the group is prepared to avail of its longer-term growth capacity. Clear is now one year into this plan and well on the road to hitting its key objectives –in terms of its P&L and its culture.

The group is growing rapidly, he said, and has doubled in size every three years for the last six years and, at the rate it is accelerating, it is set to double in size again within three years. Without spoiling the surprise that is Clear’s 2021 results, Edgeley looked back to how the business has grown in recent years. Since 2018, it has expanded from having five offices to 12 offices, from around 185 staff to 490 staff, and moved from a business with a turnover of about £21 million to one with an ever-growing turnover of about £50 million.

Read more: Clear Group reveals its key action plans for 2021

“The thing that we keep discussing is how we can manage the growth of the business while retaining our culture, because what we’re not interested in is just scale for the sake of scale,” he said. “It’s actually about getting to scale with that same mentality, that same culture – and that’s having a reputation for doing the right thing for our clients, having really good relationships with our clients, but also really good relationships with our insurers and our staff. Driving that growth, but making sure you don’t lose sight of what is actually making it happen – the team – is critical.”

For all its expansion, Clear still revolves around high-quality businesses, either pre-existing in the group or joining the group, who have the ambition to carry on growing. Vital to its growth strategy is providing the support and structure required for businesses to thrive while allowing them to retain that unique quality that first drew Clear’s attention to them. To do anything other than that, he said, would detract from the point of buying these businesses in the first place.  

It was with an eye to the support that the wider group can offer its businesses that Edgeley focused on reevaluating the structure of Clear in 2021. This resulted in the creation of regional structures in a bid to maintain close and strong relationships at all levels with all its business units. Clear prides itself on remarkably strong relationships with its businesses, but it becomes difficult to maintain that closeness when you reach a certain size, he said, and this new regional structuring was the solution.  

“As part of that regional support structure, and bearing in mind we want [our businesses] to carry on driving their own agenda, we have created a support structure for things like compliance, finance, marketing, and operations,” he said. “That’s been designed to provide that veneer of support to our businesses when they need it. It [centres] on the idea that ‘you bought a business for a set reason, now what do they need in order to continue to grow and to accelerate that growth?’”

That investment in supporting Clear’s existing businesses has been a great success already and emphasises that while the group is strongly acquisitive, its eye is on buying the right kind of businesses that are primed for organic growth. In addition to this support, Clear has invested a lot in its M&A team and M&A structure – which is where now Lickens devotes a lot of his time. That focus and the extra horsepower in that team, as well as strong market conditions, has seen the M&A pipeline completely accelerate.

“We created a plan when we were about a £225 million GWP business, this was back in April/May of last year, and we had an aspiration to get to about £300 million GWP by the end of this year, and £400 million by the end of 2023,” he said. “Well, we keep having to revise that because organic growth is going well, and the M&A pipeline is going well and with the right type of businesses… I suspect that we have the potential to be significantly north of £300 million by the end of this calendar year. And if the pipeline and the growth continue, we’ll be stretching the boundaries of what we’re hoping to achieve the following year.”

Underlining that growth potential is having the right infrastructure in place to facilitate the culture that is the heart of Clear and Edgeley is proud that the group’s structure allows its businesses to be closer than ever rather than driven apart as it continues to expand. That’s the result of its focus on people, he said, and looking at what he hopes 2022 will bring, he highlighted that continuing to get that people focus right is firmly on the agenda. That’s around making sure the hybrid working model is working for people, he said, but also about promoting individual professional development initiatives and talent management.

“I think success for us would be really making sure that Clear is known as the place that people want to come and join if they are at that point in their maturity stake as a business where they consider us their natural point of landing,” he said. “I think we are that in many instances, but there’s so much competition out there. But we’ve enjoyed significant success in the last 12 months and I think there’s more messaging we can do in terms of going out there and making people aware of why they should choose us.”

Promoting Brokerbility across the wider market is another area of focus, he said, because in the wild world that is market consolidation, he believes Brokerbility offers a secure home for brokers, especially those looking to retain their independence or to take stock and get their affairs in order before deciding their next steps.

Highlighting the cross-over of skills and market knowledge that exists within the group will also be fundamental to Clear’s success in 2022, he said. That has been a focus for him during his first year as CEO and will be further reinforced going forward because the business holds a huge amount of internal opportunities and just needs to reinforce that understanding so it becomes a natural reflex for teams to reach out to each other for support.

“We’re a group of such a size and with such a spread of capabilities, that we can now start drawing people in elsewhere around the group to offer that support,” he said. “That’s actually been a really impressive story this year and it’s something we want to really extend this coming year.”

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The Clear Group has today announced that Ashwin Mistry OBE (pictured) will step down as executive chairman of Brokerbility and Brokerbility Holdings Limited. The change is effective March 1st 2022 when Mistry will take up a new role as non-executive director on the operational board of the Clear Group.

Mistry, who helped found Brokerbility in 2006, has presided over the rapid growth of the insurance network, which hit the £700 million GWP mark in 2016. He first joined the insurance profession in 1978 with Guardian Royal Exchange and has long been recognised as a champion of the global role of the insurance industry, and the contributions of independent brokers. Mistry was president of the CII in 2014 and has been actively involved in a variety of reform initiatives – recently including the Insurance Growth Action Plan and the government’s apprenticeship scheme.

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Meanwhile, its gross written premiums (GWP) totalled $3,238.3 million, a 31.8% jump from $2,424.4 million in 2020 at constant FX rates. In its earnings release, Brit noted that this reflects strong, targeted growth in the company’s core direct and reinsurance books and the successful first year of trading for Ki Syndicate (Ki), its first fully digital and algorithmically-driven Lloyd’s of London syndicate.

Brit interim group chief executive officer (CEO) Martin Thompson, who took on his current role in early October following the announcement of Matthew Wilson’s leave of absence, commented that the company performed well in FY21 due to “continued successful execution against our strategy of leadership, innovation, and distribution”. He also paid tribute to the dedication of the company’s people and the unique culture that Wilson and his team have created across the organisation.

“Our clear strategy saw us deliver a combined ratio for the year of 95.7%. This reflected the combination of an excellent attritional ratio, prior-year reserve releases and increased income from our third-party capital management and MGA businesses,” Thompson said. “That we delivered this performance despite exposure to a number of major loss events and the continued impact of COVID-19 was particularly encouraging, demonstrating the increased resilience of our business and our firm focus on disciplined underwriting.”

Brit also invested in data and technology during FY21, including significant milestones in claims, using data to empower its lead underwriters, and its plans to appoint a chief technology officer and a chief data officer in January 2022.

For the 2022 financial year, Brit remains optimistic despite the remaining uncertainty around COVID-19, rising inflation, and the potential for the increased frequency and severity of major loss events.

“Ongoing rate rises, continued improvement in our attritional claims ratio, and our clear strategy give us confidence that Brit is well placed to respond to the opportunities and challenges ahead,” Thompson said.

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Group CEO of Lancashire, Alex Maloney commented on the results and highlighted that 2021 saw the organisation successfully continue the long-term build-out of its franchise and expand into several new classes. Much of the GWP seen by the group will continue to earn throughout 2022, he said, and is expected to provide earnings resilience in later years.

However, Maloney also noted that 2021 was also a poor one for returns. Several natural catastrophes saw industry-wide estimates place insured losses from these at between $105 billion and $130 billion making it one of the costliest years on record. These events show the critical role of the insurance industry in delivering risk solutions to protect people, economies and businesses from uncertainty, he said.

“Financial losses are always disappointing but 2021 was only the second full financial year that Lancashire made an overall loss since its inception,” Maloney commented. “Strong underlying profitability after nearly four years of rate increases, as illustrated by improvement in our attritional loss ratio, was offset by weather and large risk events during the year.

“Given the magnitude and frequency of industry losses in 2021, these insurance losses were in line with our expectations and risk tolerances. Importantly, we have followed our usual conservative reserving philosophy to estimate the impact, which has served us well over time. Nevertheless, the overall impact of these events was a comprehensive loss of $92.9 million, a combined ratio of 107.3%, and a negative change in FCBVS of 5.8% for the year. Of this comprehensive loss $31.6 million relates to unrealised investment losses.”
 
He added that despite the disappointing returns of the past year, Lancashire are “fully energised” by the prospects for 2022 and profitable growth remains its main goal. Maloney highlighted the organisation’s strong capital position which will allow it to continue to execute its ambitious business plans and thanked all Lancashire’s colleagues investors, clients, and broker partners for their support during 2021.

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Participants also included Tokyo’s Sony Financial Ventures/Global Brain, US venture capital firm MS&AD Ventures, and Berlin-based PropTech1, plus existing backers Pentech, Local Globe, and Insurtech Gateway.

“This investment is an endorsement of our parametric cover and how we’re using it to solve real-world issues,” asserted FloodFlash chief executive Adam Rimmer, whose business pays catastrophic flood claims within 48 hours. “The group of investors for the round couldn’t be better tailored to supporting our efforts in solving the issues around underinsurance in the face of climate change.”

Citing data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centres for Environmental Information, FloodFlash said only 5% to 15% of homeowners and less than 5% of SMEs in the US carry flood insurance.

Commenting on the funding round, Munich Re Ventures investment principal Ben Bergsma stated: “Parametric insurance is finally having its moment in insurtech, and we believe the FloodFlash approach will appeal to hundreds of thousands of companies in the US and beyond.

“Successfully writing natural catastrophe parametric insurance is no simple task. FloodFlash’s holistic solution, which includes sophisticated building-level underwriting and monitoring as well as an intuitive cloud platform for brokers and agents, is a game changer for the industry.”

Meanwhile, “thrilled to lead this first-class syndicate of investors” is the camp of Buoyant Ventures partner Amy Francetic, who said real solutions are needed to address flood risk. In Buoyant Ventures’ view, the British insurtech is well positioned for global expansion and success.

A registered coverholder at Lloyd’s, FloodFlash entered the insurance market in 2019.

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