Ep189 Tom Hoad Howden Ventures: Professionalising Innovation

Innovation is something we all talk about but something that is
notoriously hard to do in insurance. That’s hardly surprising
because in our industry we prize and incentivise all the things
that are the effective opposite of innovative. We reward stable
and predictable when, at least at the beginning, most innovative
ventures are likely to be highly volatile and unpredictable. And
then we wonder why it’s so hard to bring new ideas to fruition in
our sector! To be fair to ourselves, in the past few years
insurance has started to invest in people who have the word
innovation in their job title and whose performance is measured
more on whether they can bring the products of the future to
market rather than on their initial loss ratios. Tom Hoad, of is
one of this select but growing band. He moved to Howden to set up
Howden Ventures, which he describes as a vehicle for
professionalising innovation. Here Tom is combining seed and
venture funding with distribution and the ability to underwrite
through the Howden Group’s DUAL underwriting platform. In this
almost breathless podcast Tom is hugely energised at the prospect
of having all the tools at his disposal to remove the main
roadblocks in start-up insurance business’s paths. This is a
lively chat with a real expert in innovation and a master of
herding the cats of the market behind a common vision. It’s also
an episode that I hope will give you a lot of inspiration and
make you feel that the London-based insurance ecosystem is in
rude good health and highly likely to be the crucible in which
many of the insurance products of the future are going to be
forged. NOTES: I mentioned I would link to Tom’s first podcast
with The Voice of Insurance. Episode 124 is here:
https://thevoiceofinsurance.podbean.com/e/ep-124-tom-hoad-innovation-is-really-about-doing-stuff/
I also mentioned an episode earlier in the year with DUAL:
https://thevoiceofinsurance.podbean.com/e/ep163-richard-clapham-luis-munoz-rojas-of-dual-group-get-the-ham-not-just-the-bone/
Tom mentions a Julia at Airmic. Airmic is the UK’s Risk
Management trade body and Julia is Julia Graham, its CEO. LINKS
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/