Ep247 Brian Duperreault: Playing the Long Game

Today’s guest is without doubt the most successful insurance
executive I have had on the show.


He’s also completely unique in that he is the only insurance boss
I am aware of to have run one of the world’s largest insurers and
its largest broking group.


Brian Duperreault is insurance royalty. Having started his career
at AIG, he then transformed ACE from a Bermudian upstart to a
major global player.


He then ran MMC and set it on the road to a radical recovery,
founded Hamilton Insurance and then helped AIG get a spring back
in its step


He has now just founded Mereo Advisors in probably one of the
most difficult funding environments for balance-sheet businesses
in his long career.


But this introduction shouldn’t be a run-through of his superb
résumé – most of you know all of that already.


Before this meeting I’d met Brian a couple of times. I had a
brief interview with him once in the early days of the Hamilton
era and had chaired him onstage at an Insurance Conference.


But today’s episode really showcases why the podcast can be a
much more intimate and valuable medium than others.


In this encounter we had the luxury of less time pressure and
what resulted was a long and expansive conversation that is
something very different.


If you want to know how Brian has found success, listen on – it
comes through loud and clear in every sentence.


Brian cares deeply about what he does, but it’s obvious he cares
about all the people in the organisations he has run even more.
He is a rare CEO, not because he is brave, morally upstanding,
strategically audacious, a natural underwriter and risk-taker who
is strong when executing difficult decisions and has a clear
vision for how create, grow and run great insurance businesses –
he’s got all of that in abundance.


But on top of that he is self-aware enough to know instinctively
when he should hand over to a successor and try something new. As
he puts it, he knows you can let a role define you and it can get
really hard to leave when you’re the big successful boss and
everyone always laughs at all your jokes!


Some of Brian’s most lasting achievements have not just been the
growth and performance of businesses while he has run them, but
the robust state he has left them in and the continued
sustainable growth they have all achieved after he has moved on.


I could go on – but I think you get the picture by now.


Listening back, I think we managed to do the opportunity justice.


Brian’s also great fun and we ended up laughing a lot more than I
had imagined when poring studiously over my research and reading
the superb Biography that has just been written about Brian by
longstanding former colleague Wendy Davis Johnson in preparation
for this interview.


This podcast contains an enormous amount of highly valuable
advice. My advice is to listen on and take it all to heart. If as
a result anyone listening achieves even a tiny percentage of the
success that Brian has, it will have been time well spent.


LINKS:


Faith and Purpose, The Life and Vision of Insurance Icon Brian
Duperreault, is out now and available here:


https://duperreaultbio.com/how-to-order-faith-purpose/


I can highly recommend a read.


We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com We also thank audio
advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of
the highly-successful TINtech events series
and Data Jam. www.tin.events