{"id":6057,"date":"2023-09-28T08:15:12","date_gmt":"2023-09-28T07:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"httpss:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/?p=6057"},"modified":"2025-04-08T07:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T07:44:09","slug":"new-podcast-with-richard-brindle-ceo-of-fidelis-mgu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/new-podcast-with-richard-brindle-ceo-of-fidelis-mgu\/","title":{"rendered":"A granular look at underwriting \u2013 Fidelis MGU\u2019s Brindle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Ep183 Richard Brindle: If you\u2019re good enough, you\u2019re old enough\" 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\/?i=dv6ad-14b3db5-pb&amp;from=pb6admin&amp;share=0&amp;download=1&amp;rtl=0&amp;fonts=Tahoma&amp;skin=3267a3&amp;font-color=auto&amp;logo_link=episode_page&amp;btn-skin=1b1b1b\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Freeing up underwriting to allocate more time to crucial decision-making elements was a major theme of a recent Voice of Insurance Podcast, featuring Richard Brindle, CEO of specialty insurance firm Fidelis MGU.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the start of this year, Fidelis completed a transaction to split its balance sheet \u2013 \u201cProject Cooper\u201d \u2013 between its own proprietary underwriting on the one hand, and the business it underwrites on behalf of capacity providers on the other,&nbsp;creating a new managing general underwriter, Fidelis MGU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Fidelis MGU\u2019s CEO, Richard Brindle \u2013 a London market veteran underwriter \u2013 this has represented something of a midlife renaissance and a chance to return to what he enjoys best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;ve talked before about the perverse outcome in our industry where the better you are at something in your 20s and 30s, the less you do it in your 40s and above,\u201d Brindle said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a result of the split, Brindle has been able to rejoin meetings he was too busy to attend previously when leading the group in its entirety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cA good example is last week where the kick-off sessions are held with the various lines of business for our 2024 budget, that previously I didn&#8217;t have time to attend those meetings. Now I do,\u201d Brindle said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe drill down on every line of business, into things like signing ratios, renewal retention ratios, new business flows, not-taken-up stats\u2026slicing and dicing everything we do, talking about the outwards [reinsurance] that we purchase on each line, the relationships, which brokers we should use, that really granular look at underwriting and I&#8217;ve never been in those meetings before,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The same applies for his right-hand-man, Richard Coulson, Fidelis MGU\u2019s CEO of insurance and UK chief underwriting officer, he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe&#8217;re both in every meeting, we&#8217;ve come away with an armful of action points. We&#8217;re going to turn those into money; it&#8217;s about monetising the fantastic footprint that we built over the last eight years,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The benefits flow both ways, he emphasised, with junior underwriters able to have closer interaction with the command team, meaning they learn quicker on the job, something that he thinks has been lacking during the era of Coronavirus and remote working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou can&#8217;t learn the trade from your living room in Clapham; you just can&#8217;t. But equally, how much do you learn in a company where you see the C-suite once a year for a drinks reception?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fidelis MGU has a flat structure and working culture, he emphasised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNone of us have offices, we&#8217;re available all the time. I truly believe it is a unique training ground for young underwriters,\u201d Brindle said. \u201cOur underwriters are young, and we make no apology for that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today\u2019s market was made for seasoned underwriters like Brindle. As Mark pointed out, this implies the willingness to move quickly and do deals while others aren\u2019t sure, while giving meaningful support to clients willing to trade on his terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Brindle provided a great example, since reinsurers\u2019 1\/1 imposition of the Russia-Ukraine-Belarus (RUB) marine war risk exclusion. While reinsurers were focused on events in Europe, liquid natural gas shipments between Russia\u2019s Sakhalin Island and Japan were suddenly compromised \u2013 an unintended consequence if ever there was one \u2013 unless the ships could be insured on a net basis, without reinsurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhy would the Russians interfere with a very lucrative trade, which is Japanese vessels sailing into Sakhalin loading up with LNG, then going to Japan. It&#8217;s a short hop, as you can see on the map,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEqually, why would Japan mess with it, 9% of Japan&#8217;s energy needs come from the Sakhalin LNG trade. There was speculation in December that the lights might be going out in Tokyo in January if they couldn&#8217;t solve this insurance problem,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some reinsurers made an exception, with some negotiation, others did not, he noted, while writing the coverage cemented the firm\u2019s reputation for the Japanese client relationships involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe were prepared to take, at least partially, that line, by looking at the actual risk, rather than just simply being a prisoner of what our reinsurance would allow us to do,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were happy to step forward, in the old fashioned way, look at the risk, charge a price, do a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Freeing up underwriting to allocate more time to crucial decision-making elements was a major theme of a recent Voice of Insurance Podcast, featuring Richard Brindle, CEO of specialty insurance firm Fidelis MGU. At the start of this year, Fidelis completed a transaction to split its balance sheet \u2013 \u201cProject Cooper\u201d \u2013 between its own proprietary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[39,14],"line-of-business":[30,20],"class_list":["post-6057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-latest-insights","tag-reinsurance","tag-underwriting-workbench","line-of-business-political-risk","line-of-business-property"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057","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=6057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6057"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=6057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}