{"id":7087,"date":"2024-11-04T09:41:50","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T09:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"httpss:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/?p=7087"},"modified":"2025-04-09T09:00:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T09:00:41","slug":"voi-podcast-with-john-fowle-ceo-of-atrium-underwriters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/voi-podcast-with-john-fowle-ceo-of-atrium-underwriters\/","title":{"rendered":"Very little gain in &#8216;joining the herd&#8217; in the subscription market, says Atrium CEO John Fowle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Ep229 John Fowle, Atrium Underwriters: Little to be gained by joining the herd\" 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&amp;i=tptu5-17202d6-pb&amp;share=1&amp;download=1&amp;fonts=Tahoma&amp;skin=3267a3&amp;font-color=&amp;rtl=0&amp;logo_link=&amp;btn-skin=1b1b1b&amp;size=150\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Atrium&#8217;s Chief Executive John Fowle believes the market is &#8216;getting their heads around&#8217; the reality of what it takes to be a leader in the subscription market.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fowle, speaking in the Voice of Insurance podcast, said: &#8220;There is very little to be gained in just joining the herd and setting yourself up as a leader when frankly, you&#8217;re really not.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fowle told host Mark Geoghegan that brokers would not give credibility to a leader lacking in the right qualities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brokers&#8217; ambitions are &#8216;delivering good solutions to their clients in a really efficient way&#8217;, Fowle explained.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said: &#8220;That&#8217;s where consortium, where other forms of lead, follow mechanism, work extremely well, because they want to get the business priced properly.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;They want the coverage to be bespoke appropriately for their clients needs.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;They want to make sure that they are doing that appropriately. So they definitely need to be able to speak to a number of leaders.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;But once that bit is done, they really just want the most efficient way to fill out the placement.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Big numbers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fowle, who became chief executive in October last year, spoke on a broad range of subjects during the interview including: Atrium&#8217;s strategy; market lines; and innovation and technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In February, Atrium announced it would stop writing property XL reinsurance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Explaining the decision, Fowle said to be a relevant player capacity had to be deployed in &#8216;big numbers&#8217;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said: &#8220;I use that terrible analogy that I think Atrium had ended up sort of sending its team into a knife fight armed only with a toothpick, and that&#8217;s tough.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;And despite the acumen and skill and diligence of the team, I think the job is just very tough to do.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;So redeploying those skilled people, and indeed our appetite into areas of the business where we have a more meaningful presence for the brokers have just seemed like an appropriate thing for us to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Fine underwriters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fowle described the history of Atrium as one which always had &#8216;very fine underwriters&#8217; who are &#8216;disciplined&#8217;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Underpinning that was good support services and excellent claims adjustment, making Atrium a top performer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Atrium&#8217;s focus on specialisms, serving global clients from its London headquarters with a US service office, worked well, Fowle explained.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said: &#8220;We feel we can take that understanding of what good looks like and go into new areas where we think there&#8217;s a real need, where we think we can bring in or develop real knowledge and expertise that, frankly, our customers, the brokers, actually care that we&#8217;re delivering it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;So we&#8217;re not just rushing into a very busy party where there&#8217;s already too many people.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Artificial intelligence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Atrium had been exploring AI for &#8216;five or six years&#8217;, partnering up with a Lloyd&#8217;s lab participant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Atrium had found AI beneficial on the claims side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He described its usefulness in comparing policy language with unstructured claims documents. This had enabled an&nbsp;early idea of the nature of the loss.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said: &#8220;So it just speeds up the claims handling process. That&#8217;s been super, super efficient.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Conduct<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Host Geoghegan asked about Lloyd&#8217;s proposed new conduct framework.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Announced in September, the framework addresses improper conduct and behaviour in the marketplace, covering both financial and non-financial wrongdoing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fowle said he &#8216;welcomed&#8217; the consultation and Atrium would contribute.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He explained it was important to learn the lessons of how conduct has been handled to date.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He added: &#8220;The whistleblowers and the witnesses in any of these conduct situations really need to be kept at the centre of the process in a way that protects them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Because if we want a market environment where people feel that they can whistle blow and that not be to their detriment, that must be key, because that&#8217;s the way that you&#8217;re going to uncover poor conduct and then be able to deal with it.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Atrium&#8217;s Chief Executive John Fowle believes the market is &#8216;getting their heads around&#8217; the reality of what it takes to be a leader in the subscription market. Fowle, speaking in the Voice of Insurance podcast, said: &#8220;There is very little to be gained in just joining the herd and setting yourself up as a leader [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6594,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[12,39,14],"line-of-business":[20],"class_list":["post-7087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-latest-insights","tag-policy-admin","tag-reinsurance","tag-underwriting-workbench","line-of-business-property"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7087","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=7087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7087"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=7087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}