Mosaic CEO charts growth journey with specialty focus and diversified capital

Mark Wheeler, CEO of Mosaic Insurance, a Bermuda-based specialty insurer, appeared on the latest episode of the Voice of Insurance podcast, in association with AdvantageGo.

Mosaic Insurance is pushing ahead with its mission to reshape specialist underwriting, as the firm builds on rapid expansion and profitability since launch.

Mark Wheeler, chief executive of Mosaic, shared insights into the Bermuda firm’s growth, speaking on the Voice of Insurance podcast.

He also explained the firm’s unique model – a syndicated model combining carrier characteristics with external capital – and how technology is transforming risk selection.

Building scale with discipline

Wheeler instantly rejected the idea that Mosaic’s ambitions could be described as a “project”, calling it “more of an odyssey or a crusade to change the face of specialty”.

Since its beginnings, Mosaic has grown from around 70 staff to 220, in seven countries, delivering compound annual growth of 60% and writing $660m in gross premium across seven lines of specialty business in 2024.

The firm’s footprint, he said, gives access to more than 80% of Mosaic’s targeted business. Wheeler described a shift in Mosaic’s geographical balance, with the US accounting for a growing share of underwriting activity. About a third of the insurer’s staff are US-based, and expected to increase.

“That trajectory will continue. We’re going to do more in the US in the immediate future,” Wheeler revealed.

Profitability has been as important as scale. Mosaic’s syndicate closed 2024 with a 79% combined ratio, “irritatingly” narrowly missing Lloyd’s top decile, but suggesting refined risk selection credentials for a young firm with growth ambitions.

“Getting the growth and the profit is what it’s all about for us. The profit bit was key,” Wheeler said.

Syndicated capital and market alignment

A central element of Mosaic’s strategy is its syndicated capital model, blending its own capital with a growing pool of partners. “It’s about 50-50,” Wheeler said.

“We now have 27 underwriting partners or clients who sit alongside us for everything we write.” Over time, Mosaic plans to retain around 20% of risk via its syndicate, aiming to “always be the biggest line on the slip at scale”.

Wheeler underlined that this is far from a capital-light model. “It’s absolutely not capital light. It’s just not all ours,” he said, stressing the value of alignment between Mosaic and its partners.

On the future of the market, Wheeler predicted greater distinction between market makers and data-driven broker facilities. “Efficiency will win,” he emphasised.

“In a relatively short period of time, we are going to have a clear demarcation between market makers and a set of capital that picks their market makers.”

AI and risk selection

Wheeler highlighted Mosaic’s investment in technology as a major advantage of building the firm from scratch. Artificial intelligence, he said, is central to Mosaic’s focus on enhanced risk selection.

“Ultimately, I think the one thing that we can all coalesce around is risk selection and what the future looks like there with the benefit of AI is just extraordinary.”

Mosaic’s partnerships with cyber technology firms Safe Security and Fulcrum Technologies are helping the firm quantify risk in new ways.

“They are providing us data-driven models, based on audit inside-out view on the likelihood of loss and the cost of loss against the prevailing threat environment,” Wheeler said.

The newest partnership he mentioned is with Canongate AI for Mosaic’s underwriting of political risk, which was up 450% in premium, year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025.

The AI startup is using “massive data absorption…trialling lead indicators to political disruptions”, Wheeler revealed, currently in the pre-testing phase.

Looking ahead, Wheeler sees growing opportunity in using technology to support underwriting in emerging risks, such as political violence and environmental liability.

“At the end of the day, I want to get an objective view on risk. A primary obligation on us is to provide our underwriters with better risk selection capability,” he said.

“And that would be one reason why people want to work here, and another reason why underwriters would want to underwrite alongside us. At the end of the day it keeps coming back to risk selection,” Wheeler added.