From Countdown to Casualty (insurance) – MS Amlin’s Martin Burke

MS Amlin CUO Martin Burke has had “a squiggly career path” but he is a rare thing – someone who meant to become an actuary and work in insurance from the get-go.

Origin stories on Mark Geoghegan’s Voice of Insurance podcast usually share something in common: the guest never intended to get into the insurance industry. Sure, they’ve risen to prominence and success, but it was by accident at some point.

Not so MS Amlin’s chief underwriting officer (CUO), Martin Burke, who actually studied and wanted to get into actuarial mathematics – the quantitative side of insurance – from the get-go.

“I always knew I wanted to be an actuary, so when I went to university, I studied actuarial mathematics,” he says, prompting a double-take from the host.

Prompted to go a level deeper, he suggests “it came with a fascination with the numbers game on Countdown”, the long-running UK daytime TV show UK based around words and numbers games. The numbers game being “the bit I liked best”, he says.

“It just naturally flowed into a tendency to like more mathematical subjects. I did science and maths, and then I sort of naturally flowed into being an actuary,” Burke continues.

“My sister was an accountant, my brother was an architect, so I started at ‘A’ on the careers list at the back of the [university applications] form, and I only got as far as actuary before I thought, ‘that sounds like the right thing for me’,” he adds, more or less seriously, prompting howls of laugher from the host.

He was tempted to work in life insurance as much as property and casualty business, he suggests, but was soon corrected about which was the way to go. “Everyone I met that summer said, ‘You do not want to work in life insurance. You really want to go and work in general insurance,’” he says.

No regrets

Burke’s well rounded career spans reserving actuary, pricing, finance, risk, portfolio management and underwriting.

“People think of career paths. As like a straight Roman road, but often you can veer off the road because you have to experiment and try different things,” he says.

By being “down in the engine room”, he thinks those broader insights have helped. “I realised I want to be involved in the story of the business – that’s the critical thing,” he adds.

Starting on the general insurance side of Commercial Union, his career took him on to Wellington Underwriting, bought by Catlin six years later, moving into pricing and finance, and taking him into the Lloyd’s and London market, something about which he evidently has no regrets.

“That was about the year 2000 and I haven’t looked back since. Lloyd’s and the London market: that’s the space I now realise I was lucky enough to join and get into,” Burke says.

His next move took him to Mitsui Sumitomo’s Lloyd’s syndicate, where he was a chief risk officer, joining “a small syndicate…at a really nice time for the business”.

“An actuarial background seemed to push me in that direction. And I really enjoyed working in risk, because I’m a nosy individual by inclination, and I enjoyed getting involved in all the different parts of the business,” he says.

Four years later, to 2016, the integration with Amlin occurred, bringing him to his current organisation, working within portfolio management, working with analytics for which he said the risk and actuarial background came in handy. And in 2023, he was ready to step up the CUO role for MS Amlin, responsible for profitably growing a £2bn ($2.5bn) book.

“It’s been really pleasing to move into a role where, I’m now responsible for the P&L [profit and loss reporting], but I’ve been responsible for constructive criticism of the P&L for quite a while. It’s good to wear a different hat and take a different level of responsibility,” Burke says.

Casualty growth

Actuarial training and a focus on reserving are helpful for dealing with one of the industry’s thornier issues at present for CUOs: casualty business. A strategy process undertaken in 2023 led to a focus on three specific areas of business. Property is a historical strength but not a growth area, because balance is needed elsewhere, he suggests.

Some of this will come in the specialty part of the book – including things like crisis management and marine re/insurance business – but it is on the casualty side where MS Amlin has appetite for growth, he suggests, something that may work well for the firm as others hesitate or withdraw from this space amid reserving concerns, particularly in North America.

“Fundamentally, we were underweight in casualty business, both casualty insurance business and casualty treaty [reinsurance]. During 2024 and in 2025 we’re absolutely making steps in both those spaces. We intend to grow more than proportionately. We have an overarching aim to grow modestly over the period from $2bn towards $2.5bn [premium] over a three-to-five-year period,” he says.

After cautious optimism in discussions at Monte Carlo last year, he is upbeat about casualty performance in 2025 for the firm.

I can take the opportunity here to put a shout out to our casualty and casualty treaty teams, because in terms of how things are performed in 2025 renewals, it’s been a fantastic start to the year, really pleasing…and there’s a good pipeline of opportunities in both of those teams,” he says.

On the primary side, MS Amlin’s casualty emphasis is through managing general agents (MGAs), for which he emphasises actively management of the coverholders involved.

Much of this business is insuring small to medium sized enterprises, and industries such as healthcare and low hazard occupancies, with US and international business, but avoiding large corporate casualty insurance. “In sticking with those niches, that really helps us to understand the risk to the best of our abilities,” he adds.