{"id":10385,"date":"2026-05-29T10:23:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/?p=10385"},"modified":"2026-05-29T10:23:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:23:20","slug":"voi-podcast-with-will-bridger-group-ceo-at-compre-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/voi-podcast-with-will-bridger-group-ceo-at-compre-group\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Runoff: Why Compre&#8217;s Will Bridger Is Rewriting the Legacy Playbook"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe title=\"Ep303 Will Bridger Compre: Beyond traditional Legacy\" 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=6k38r-1ad12b3-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><strong>The legacy market has long been the insurance industry&#8217;s quiet engine room &#8211; a place where discontinued books go to be tidied up and final claims paid out. But that picture is increasingly out of date. Speaking to <em>Voice of Insurance<\/em> host Mark Geoghegan, Compre group CEO Will Bridger set out a vision of a legacy sector that is no longer just about claims runoff, but about deploying capital across the entire underwriting cycle.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For c-suite leaders in the London market, Bermuda and the US specialty space, his message is one to sit up for: the relationship between live carriers and legacy players is being reshaped, and the next phase will look very different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>From runoff specialist to capital allocator<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bridger, who came into legacy via investment banking rather than claims handling, has overseen Compre&#8217;s growth from \u00a350m in total assets in 2010 to around \u00a32.6bn today, with headcount up from 30 to 200. But the most striking number is forward-looking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The traditional legacy group where all you were doing was acquiring and managing your own business for your own account&#8230; it used to be 100%,&#8221; Bridger explained. &#8220;Going forward, I expect it to be about one-third of what we do.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other two-thirds? Adverse development covers structured on a cancel-and-replace basis, whole-account quota shares alongside rated reinsurers, and casualty sidecar participations including Compre&#8217;s deal last year with QBE Re, Calidris and Culpeper on the George Street Re vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A foot in both camps<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The shift means Compre will increasingly sit alongside its cedents from underwriting day one, rather than picking up books years after the fact. That changes the information dynamic. And the pricing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The closer we get to our cedant&#8217;s underwriting, the better we&#8217;re able to price it,&#8221; Bridger said. &#8220;In a traditional legacy deal, we get a short period of time to review a book of business and set a loss pick. Inevitably, the information asymmetry pushes us to be more cautious.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By contrast, recurring structures allow Compre to align with management teams over time, getting comfortable with reserving philosophy, claims approach and underwriting guidelines. The upshot, Bridger argued, is more predictable income, smoother results, and a genuine counter-cyclical hedge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;For the first time, we&#8217;re going to be able to look at our underwriting across the market and say, where do we get the best return for the capital we&#8217;re going to deploy?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Reading the cycle<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a tough hard market when carriers were focused on growth rather than capital optimisation Bridger sees legacy volumes beginning to pick up. &#8220;When the tide is in, people don&#8217;t really look at what&#8217;s on the seabed,&#8221; he said. The softening environment is bringing renewed rigour around capital allocation by line of business and geography, which translates directly into deal flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/lines-of-business\/general-liability\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">US casualty remains the biggest single opportunity<\/a>, particularly in commercial auto, workers&#8217; compensation and general liability, though reserve adequacy varies sharply across the market. Europe, he noted, is shifting too. With private capital entering European carriers, capital optimization deals are emerging alongside traditional discontinued books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AI: risk mitigation over cost cutting<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bridger was clear that AI&#8217;s biggest payoff for legacy will not be headcount reduction. Compre is building a proprietary claims intelligence tool, with an MVP due in September, designed to surface the dangerous claims that sit quietly reserved at $50,000 but have a real risk of escalating to $500,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The real area that I think can drive ROE: I think efficiency will help, but it&#8217;s not going to take our cost base and cut it in half in 18 months. Where it can make a real difference is on the risk that we&#8217;re taking on.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What to take away<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For senior executives across the live and legacy worlds, three things stand out from Bridger&#8217;s conversation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>* Legacy is no longer a single product. Carriers should expect partners like Compre to compete for capital across prospective, retrospective and hybrid structures<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>* The soft market will reward those with disciplined capital allocation and create more opportunities for combined covers, quota shares and recurring ADCs<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>* AI&#8217;s near-term edge in claims-heavy books lies in surfacing hidden risk, not just shaving expense<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Listen to the full episode of <em>Voice of Insurance<\/em> podcast with Will Bridger to hear the full conversation on sidecars, soft markets, Canadian pension capital and the future of the legacy sector.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The legacy market has long been the insurance industry&#8217;s quiet engine room &#8211; a place where discontinued books go to be tidied up and final claims paid out. But that picture is increasingly out of date. Speaking to Voice of Insurance host Mark Geoghegan, Compre group CEO Will Bridger set out a vision of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10386,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[39,38,25,12,10],"line-of-business":[32,29,28,20],"class_list":["post-10385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-latest-insights","tag-reinsurance","tag-technical-vision","tag-ecosystem","tag-policy-admin","tag-exposure","line-of-business-trade-credit","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\/10385","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=10385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10385"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=10385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}