{"id":10367,"date":"2026-04-24T06:51:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/?p=10367"},"modified":"2026-04-24T06:51:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:51:26","slug":"voi-podcast-with-tessa-wardle-director-of-portfolio-solutions-at-qbe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/voi-podcast-with-tessa-wardle-director-of-portfolio-solutions-at-qbe\/","title":{"rendered":"Portfolio solutions is getting big enough to matter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe title=\"Ep298 Tessa Wardle QBE Portfolio Solutions: Indexing the Market\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);height:150px;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?from=embed&#038;i=mzuqi-1aa2fe2-pb&#038;share=1&#038;download=1&#038;fonts=Tahoma&#038;skin=3267a3&#038;font-color=auto&#038;rtl=0&#038;logo_link=episode_page&#038;btn-skin=3267a3&#038;size=150\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>Portfolio solutions used to sound like a niche London Market curiosity. A broker facility here, a consortium there, a few specialist teams doing high volumes quietly in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That description no longer fits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Mark Geoghegan puts it at the top of this episode, &#8220;billions of dollars of premium are now being transacted this way&#8221; as brokers facilitise more of their placements and underwriting pools proliferate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To understand what that looks like in practice, he speaks to <strong>Tessa Wardle<\/strong>, Director of Portfolio Solutions at QBE. Wardle runs QBE Portfolio Solutions (QPS), and she is unusually clear about two things: why this model is scaling, and what you have to do to stop it drifting when the cycle turns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A career built across both sides of the deal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wardle&#8217;s route into this part of the market matters because she has done the broking and the underwriting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She studied maths, did a placement year as an actuarial assistant at Aon, then took an underwriting assistant role at Chubb in political risk and trade credit. After travelling, she targeted the London Market and joined Marsh as an energy broker, working large global clients across upstream, downstream and construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She then joined QBE to run its energy liability portfolio, did that for seven years, and moved into portfolio solutions about three and a half years ago. Put simply, she understands how brokers build flow, and how underwriters stay in control once the flow gets big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>From follow market to building a strategic arm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>QBE\u2019s entry into portfolio solutions was not born out of a grand strategic reveal. Wardle describes it as \u201cquite organic\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>QBE wrote its first cross-class broker facility in 2016, initially as a follow market. It had \u201cquite a few challenges in the early years\u201d and then, in 2020, QBE took over the leadership, made changes, and worked closely with the broker to improve performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was the moment, Wardle says, when they \u201csaw the opportunity and the potential for this type of underwriting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, QPS is a team of 16 and growing. \u201cWe continue to grow,\u201d she says, and they are recruiting again this year. The portfolio itself is split into \u201ctwo main portfolios\u201d, broker facilities and MGA consortia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Two models, two different jobs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wardle explains the split in a way that will make sense to anyone who has actually had to manage these structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Broker facilities are about taking a slice of a broker\u2019s wider book. \u201cYou\u2019re looking to track the broker\u2019s portfolio, their whole portfolio,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s large, it\u2019s diverse, it\u2019s broad\u2026 you\u2019re looking to gain a small share of their book.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Consortia is used differently. Wardle says they use it \u201cas a tool to balance out our broker facility side of the business\u201d, backing market leaders in particular niches. Those leaders can write risks 100%, and QBE can take a smaller share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That matters because \u201cbroker facilities don\u2019t work so well for risks that are placed 100%,\u201d she says. \u201cIn fact, they\u2019re completely out of scope.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is an important point. \u201cPortfolio solutions\u201d is not one product. It is a set of underwriting arrangements designed to solve different placement problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The word that matters: indexation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If there is one technical concept that keeps coming up, it is <strong>indexation<\/strong>. Wardle defines it without dressing it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIndexation is basically the same as anti-selection or how you remove anti-selection. It\u2019s how well you\u2019re indexing a portfolio.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s what she means, in normal market language. Facilities used to get a bad name because some of them became a convenient place to hide problems. Not because everyone was acting in bad faith, but because when placements get hard, bad behaviours creep in. If a risk is awkward, the temptation is to steer it towards the most \u201cautomatic\u201d capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indexation is the measure that tells you whether that is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mark pushes the investing analogy to make it clearer: is this like a fund manager trying to outsmart the market, or is it closer to tracking a benchmark?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wardle is clear: \u201cIt\u2019s more comparable to a tracker.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They do set parameters and they do shape the portfolio, but the central discipline is making sure the slice they get looks like the book they are meant to be supporting. And then proving that with data, not with hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scale is a requirement, not a nice-to-have<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wardle also makes a point that often gets missed when people talk about facilitising ever more classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI think there is something in that you need scale for a portfolio to work,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A portfolio works because it can balance volatility. You can bring in smaller classes of business, but they need to be stabilised by larger ones. Some classes are harder to facilitise cleanly, either because indexation is harder to control, or because aggregation management is tricky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She uses credit as an example of something that can be done, but \u201cyou need a few more controls\u201d and it \u201cmay or may not suit that facility\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Again, she keeps it practical. This is not magic. It is portfolio construction, and some mixes behave better than others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How big can this get?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mark asks the question everyone asks eventually: how much of the market could move this way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wardle references the LMA enhanced underwriting report and an estimate that in 10 years the potential for this market could be around $60bn for Lloyd\u2019s, based on a market of $127bn. That implies something close to half of the market could be transacted via enhanced underwriting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Does 50% become unstable? Wardle does not pretend there is a neat answer. She says there is an \u201cequilibrium\u201d between having enough leaders to keep the market competitive and having enough fast-follow capacity to make the model efficient. The right balance varies by class and by client size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When she asks brokers what they think is optimal, she gets the range. \u201cThere\u2019s really no consensus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is probably the honest truth. The market will find the limit by living through different conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The soft-market problem, in one sentence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most useful moment in the episode comes when Wardle talks about what happens when the market softens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf you don\u2019t have your facility, during a hard market because you burnt it during a soft market. That\u2019s not particularly great,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is the reason these structures are being treated more seriously now. A broker facility is not only about speed and efficiency today. It is about reliable capacity when you actually need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wardle says the difference this time is the focus on monitoring and active management. \u201cWe\u2019re always looking at the metrics, looking at what\u2019s going to portfolio, looking at what the market\u2019s doing. And there are adjustments we can make.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other part is alignment. QBE wants partners who view these facilities as something you manage through a cycle, not something you exploit in one phase of it. Wardle says they \u201calways want to work with partners who see this as a long-term solution\u201d and want it to be viable \u201cthroughout cycles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AI helps with the grind, not the judgement<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On AI, Wardle is enthusiastic, but her focus is not hype. It is the foundational work that has to happen before any \u201cinsight\u201d exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFor us, we have vast amounts of unstructured data. We have to stitch lots of data together. We have to cleanse it, enrich it,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a whole lot of work just to get to a foundational level\u2026 so we can provide some good insights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>AI, in her view, will increasingly support that groundwork, speeding up data preparation and improving what underwriters can see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But she draws a clear line on autonomy. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ll ever remove the human in terms of underwriting and many of our processes,\u201d she says. The job is still built on relationships, governance, and judgement. Technology is there to give people better tools, not to replace them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What this episode really shows<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/products\/underwriting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Portfolio solutions underwriting<\/a> is not \u201cpress a button and go for coffee\u201d. It is high-volume underwriting that lives or dies on controls: indexation, aggregation oversight, constant dialogue with brokers and coverholders, and the discipline to keep facilities healthy when competition returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If this model keeps expanding, it will not be because it is fashionable. It will be because it is efficient and because teams like QPS can show they are keeping the machine on the rails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Portfolio solutions used to sound like a niche London Market curiosity. A broker facility here, a consortium there, a few specialist teams doing high volumes quietly in the background. That description no longer fits. As Mark Geoghegan puts it at the top of this episode, &#8220;billions of dollars of premium are now being transacted this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10368,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[39,38,25,14,10],"line-of-business":[32,30,29,28,20],"class_list":["post-10367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-latest-insights","tag-reinsurance","tag-technical-vision","tag-ecosystem","tag-underwriting-workbench","tag-exposure","line-of-business-trade-credit","line-of-business-political-risk","line-of-business-marine","line-of-business-general-liability","line-of-business-property"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10367"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=10367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}