Ep187 Alistair Wood CEO Hampden Capital: Selling an improved Lloyd’s product

Today’s guest runs a business that has been a cornerstone of the
Lloyd’s market for a generation and has a pedigree that stretches
a long way further back than that. Alistair Wood is the CEO of
Hampden Capital and also Hampden Agencies, the largest of the
Lloyd’s Members’ Agents, with over £2 billion in funds under
management. Because Hampden is a dedicated investor into Lloyd’s
there is no-one better to talk to if you are trying to understand
the best opportunities and the most pressing threats affecting
the 300-plus year old marketplace today. This is a really
enjoyable conversation, not just because Alistair is one of the
Lloyd’s Market’s best analysts whose insights are highly
valuable, but more because of the progressive and dynamic nature
of the business he is running. A Lloyd’s Members’ Agent is an
incredibly traditional business in many ways, but that doesn’t
mean Hampden is standing still. Hampden has long been a
sought-after adviser to corporate, as well as private capital and
its efforts to hep build and promote entirely new routes for
investors into the Lloyd’s market are highly innovative and
encouraging. In the past Lloyd’s has sometimes been perceived as
slow to react to new forms of capital, but now that couldn’t be
further from the truth. With listed vehicles, cells in London
Bridge 2, Syndicates in boxes, follow Syndicate capacity, or
innumerable other structures, wherever there is an opportunity it
seems that Hampden and the wider Lloyd’s ecosystem is seeking to
make the most of it. Alistair is also a great guest – intelligent
and completely on top of his brief but unfailingly polite and
good-humoured and completely transparent and direct with his
answers. He’s a great blend of all the virtues of the traditional
Lloyd’s market with something a little more contemporary. Listen
on for valuable tips and nuances and a strong idea of where the
market is heading. From our encounter Lloyd’s and the wider
wholesale specialty and reinsurance markets seem to be in rude
good health. NOTES: With hindsight Alistair felt he had slightly
oversimplified Lloyd’s London Bridge 2 structure while trying to
explain it in plain English to me. Here’s a link to a fully
comprehensive presentation about London Bridge 2 from Lloyd’s
itself, so use this for hard reference:
https://assets.lloyds.com/media/70d4d759-2ade-4569-b804-d7dcc9fd39b2/An-Introduction-to-London-Bridge-2-PCC-FINAL.pdf
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