The Voice of Insurance

Today, we’re going to go deeper into the world of cyber attacks than we have ever done before. We’ll be looking at the insurance claims that they produce as well as the longer-term consequences for their victims Often as journalists covering cyber insurance we focus on the big hacks, the headline numbers, and gloss over the detail of the personal stories and the real hard yards that have to be run to recover from an attack and the potential long-term consequences for a business, its directors, its customers and all other stakeholders. As the immediate damage and business interruption triggers potential regulatory, statutory and other serious third-party consequences, these hard yards often have to be run down multiple different paths simultaneously. The in-depth interviews that follow will deepen your understanding of the more complex and long-tail nature of this peril. I’d like to put you right in the room in the shoes of the Directors of a company as an attack unfolds. We’re going behind the scenes to uncover what it’s really like when a business becomes the target of a digital assault, from the immediate shock to the long-term repercussions that are often ignored by boards. We’re also going to go into detail on how the nature of the cyber threat and the tactics of cyber criminals are evolving. To help me in this task my guests are: Magnus Jelen, (pictured top) Director of Incident Response EMEA for Coveware, a firm that helps victims of cyber extortion recover their data; and three senior executives at Beazley: Raf Sanchez (pictured 2nd from top), Beazley’s Head of Cyber Services, Cyber Risks. Melissa Collins, (pictured 2nd from bottom) Head of Third Party Cyber & Tech Claims, and Wayne Imrie, (pictured bottom) Head of London Market Wholesale Executive Risks. Magnus and Raf are right on the front line, dealing with the immediate consequences of a hack. Magnus even deals with the hackers themselves. Melissa deals with the external insurance claims that result and Wayne is a Directors and Officers (D&O) specialist who has a deep understanding of how the D&O and Cyber insurance products interact. LINKS:  As promised, here is the link to Beazley's latest Risk and Resilience Survey Spotlight on Tech Transformation & Cyber Risk 2025: https://www.beazley.com/en-001/news-and-events/spotlight-on-tech-transformation-cyber-risk-2025/

This week’s Episode is a burst of energy. Jason Howard is President of Acrisure International and has the task of looking after everything in the Acrisure Group that is outside the US, Reinsurance and Wholesale. This means most of the world is effectively his oyster. A group as ambitious and fast-moving as Acrisure needs someone with enormous drive and enthusiasm to deliver on such a universal role and Jason is the embodiment of that. In this podcast Jason explains Acrisure’s global end-to-end insurance strategy in great detail – from a retail broker anywhere in the world all the way to Lloyd’s Syndicates and the capital markets. This makes for an incredibly broad and rich conversation. Naturally we talk about the role of strategic M&A in building a global network, but we also discuss the market and how a business like Acrisure can differentiate itself by joining up the global value chain and making it work more responsively and more efficiently. We also dissect the less tangible questions of corporate culture and the industry’s developing relationship with technology and automated underwriting in general and AI in particular. The business’s explosive growth record speaks for itself – as does Jason. I first met Jason in an underwriter’s queue over thirty years ago – I can verify that if anything today he has more energy, enthusiasm and positivity than he did back then as a young man. It’s infectious. I promise that the next half an hour will pass by very quickly and in it you will learn exactly what makes Acrisure International tick and a lot more besides. NOTES: Jason was last on the show five years ago when he was CEO of Beach & Associates, before it was rebranded to Acrisure Re. Here’s the link to that podcast, recorded 240 Episodes in the past: https://thevoiceofinsurance.podbean.com/e/ep-22-casualty-capital-and-covid-with-jason-howard-ceo-of-beach/ LINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

Today’s Episode is a really enjoyable two-hander. After over twenty years running the IUA (or the International Underwriting Association, to spell it out in full) Dave Matcham has just passed his CEO role over to Chris Jones. So this episode serves a double mission. The first is to mark the extraordinary career of Dave Matcham, the London Market’s longest-serving CEO and someone who has helped guide the market through more than 20 years of change. With Dave we look back on some of the most significant milestones and sometimes tumultuous events shaping a lifetime of service to the market. Then we will bring everything up to date as Chris and Dave outline the London Company market trade body’s agenda on all the most pressing issues of the day. Running a trade body is often a thankless and unglamorous task, with a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes to make sure the market functions as it should. Dave has been a tireless servant for his membership and the broader London Market and Chris has big shoes to fill. Dave has always been one of the most knowledgeable and approachable senior figures in the market, with a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to business. From this meeting Chris is continuing in that mould. So, if you want a sense of how international insurers’ relationship with the UK regulators is developing, where market process reform is heading and how the market is dealing with issues such as the application of AI and the policing of non-financial misconduct, please listen on. Dave and Chris are well-rounded, level-headed and very often light-hearted company and the time will fly by. We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

Today’s Episode is all about collaboration. To anyone in the London Market, VIPR has become a very well-known technology company, particularly in the area of Delegated Authority, where its Bordereaux management systems have achieved a critical mass of adoption. But as the business looks to expand globally, particularly the huge and strategically-crucial US market, it needs to partner with existing major players to achieve its goal. Just because we all know that weaning the insurance sector off spreadsheets and other documents is a universal problem, it doesn’t follow that a business like VIPR will automatically gain business just because it has a solution that has been tried and tested over time. This is where Sikich comes in, as a trusted adviser implementing technological transformation, it’s picked VIPR to go to market to help prepare itself for the coming fully-digital and AI-enabled age. In this podcast Rahul Bhatia, Principal at Sikich and Tony Russell Chief Revenue Officer at VIPR outline this alliance and the huge prize on offer to clients that are able to automate how data, not documents, flow through their businesses, from their customers and onto their own suppliers and wider stakeholders. MGAs, particularly US-domiciled ones, have ridden a spectacular wave of growth in the past decade. If that is to continue and they are to cement their tech advantage, they need to listen to what Rahul and Tony have to say. We live in exciting, revolutionary times and today VIPR and Sikich are at the frontier of delivering a lot of the technological change that much of the industry has been dreaming about for decades. So if you want to know how underwriters can grow without adding to cost while at the same time becoming more skilful at underwriting and more responsive to client needs and new demand, this podcast is for you. Rahul and Tony are hugely experienced in this field and are relatable, down to earth and easy to talk to. I can highly recommend a listen. LINKS & CONTACTS: https://www.viprsolutions.com/ www.sikich.com Rahul Bhatia’s contacts are: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahul-bhatia-profile/ Email rahul.bhatia@sikich.com