Sp Ep John Mason CEO Placing Platform Limited (PPL): 'It seems so obvious, why didn't we do it before?'

Today’s guest is quite out of the ordinary for the Voice of
Insurance.


Normally guests on the podcast can recount multi-decade careers
in insurance from the time they fell into the industry up to the
present day.


Today’s guest is extraordinary because he is someone of vast
experience in his field but who has only just been recruited into
the insurance industry.


John Mason is the CEO of London Market electronic placing
provider PPL and can boast a glittering career running the core
systems and platforms that support hugely important global
financial markets in other financial sectors outside of
insurance.


From this encounter I can tell you straight away that I think
that we have a lot more to learn from John than he does from us.


But thankfully for us John is not the sort of outsider who has
come to lecture us on how to drag our antiquated trading systems
into line with markets that fully digitised decades ago.


John is an experienced leader and the type of communicator who
understands that a market that syndicates bespoke structured
insurance coverage across the globe is bound to throw up many
unique complications and challenges


He gets the tone just right – he is here to do an important job
and he has a clear vision of how to go about it, but he is very
conscious of the need to meet us where we are and show how tech
is going to make the way we already work way more efficient and
higher added value, rather than try and force us to completely
change the way we do business.


And that’s where this extraordinary podcast adds its value. John
is easily the most eloquent leader running a core insurance
technology platform I have ever interviewed. He knows where the
pitfalls lie and has the experience to know how to execute large,
complicated, transformational projects.


He hasn’t been with us long, but the ideas we discuss in the time
that follows are highly impressive and are set to transform
frontline brokers’ and underwriters’ day-to-day relationship with
the technology they use to carry out their jobs.


They could unleash a wave of productivity and creativity that
would completely re-set the market’s relationship with itself and
with the rest of the world.


It’s extraordinary stuff – but as I said at the beginning, John
is very much out of the ordinary.


LINKS:


We mention a video that PPL has produced outlining the vision
behind its recently-announced partnership with Microsoft. I
highly recommend a view: https://vimeo.com/1017109828 


https://placingplatformlimited.com