Ep175 Julian James, Sompo International: A Degree of Equilibrium

Today’s guest is someone who has had a career now into its fifth
decade and is someone who I have been interviewing on an off for
just under 20 years. He has held senior roles in broking
businesses, underwriting firms and right in the heart of Lloyd’s.
Today Julian James is CEO of Global Markets Commercial P&C
Insurance at Sompo International. This is a global role that
encompasses everything relating to commercial P&C in the
Sompo organisation that is outside Japan or North America. Few
executives could cope with a role that is this international,
stretching from the far east all the way across to Brazil. But it
is a job that suits someone like Julian down to the ground
because he is someone who has been a globe-trotter for as long as
I have known him and has a global outlook on the insurance
business But just because I and many of you know already him, it
doesn’t mean that Julian has lost the ability to surprise. In
this interview I find someone energised and enthused about the
challenge of creating and presenting a consistent and coherent
Sompo offering to worldwide clients. With myriad jurisdictions,
systems, brokers, languages and cultures to deal with, this is
extremely hard to do. I also meet someone heading a business that
has been discreetly increasing many of its risk appetites while
most others have been moving in the opposite direction and which
has grown quickly as a result. I also meet a global
representative of a huge business that as recently as 5 years ago
was not at all well known or understood outside its core Japanese
market and has a large amount of communicating to do. Listening
back this is a remarkably broad and fun conversation that covers
a vast array of topics and lifts the lid on Julian and the wider
Sompo organisation’s strategic thinking on the key issues facing
the market. We even briefly touch on Eastern and Western
philosophy. NOTES We spoke about some ancient history and I
promised to put something in the notes about it. Julian worked at
Sedgwick (a major UK-headquartered broker) early in his career.
Sedgwick was acquired by MMC in 1998, at the height of what was
then an unprecedented wave of consolidation that established MMC
and Aon as the first genuinely global broking houses:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB904040627273832000 LINKS We thank
our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/