{"id":9284,"date":"2024-12-12T09:33:08","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T09:33:08","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-04-22T04:33:45","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T04:33:45","slug":"voi-podcast-with-david-howden-ceo-of-howden-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/voi-podcast-with-david-howden-ceo-of-howden-group\/","title":{"rendered":"Expertise and distribution \u2013 an EC3 broker\u2019s tour with David Howden"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Ep234 Distribution &amp; Expertise: Walking the City with David Howden\" 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=wrfh9-1765fdb-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>An outside broadcast is a novelty for the Voice of Insurance, but knowing David Howden, CEO of Howden Group, his high-octane energy levels mean a walking tour blog make a lot of sense.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The latest Voice of Insurance podcast is a brisk walk through Howden Group\u2019s past, present and future, starting with that original office location and the other London market locations crucial to the group\u2019s evolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>David Howden started what was then Howden Pangbourne, a small wholesale broker, just over thirty years ago with two others and, famously, a dog, in a tiny office on St Dunstan\u2019s Hill in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDistribution expertise. It&#8217;s been the same for 30 years. It hasn&#8217;t really changed,\u201d Howden said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He provided some colour to the \u201cHowden 30\/30\u201d strategy, as his vision for the firm as it turns 30 and looks towards the year 2030. The plan aims to reach $10bn in revenue by 2030, with a focus on global expansion, reinsurance, and specialty lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou never start with the numbers,\u201d Howden said. \u201cWe want to build a great business that is truly global, and that its people are proud of. Pride is something people understand. Culture is very important to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAlso using our collective power collaboration to change the way people think about insurance. We want to grow the insurance market, and we think by then we&#8217;ll be at $10bn of revenue,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The conversation highlighted some key milestones, including the 2023 acquisition of US treaty broker TigerRisk, and the rise of the group\u2019s reinsurance broking arm, Howden Re, which now generates roughly $600m in annual revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe formed the view that there was a genuine need for new reinsurance broker in the market,\u201d Howden said. \u201cA lot of talent has joined us, but also the clients; how many markets would there be where there are only three proper players offering an alternative?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Talk of Howden Re as a \u201cchallenger broker\u201d is over, he suggested. \u201cWe talk about being one of four global reinsurance brokers, and there&#8217;ll be areas\u2026where we&#8217;re absolutely the leader,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He selected two examples of reinsurance broking leadership, picking on Howden Capital Markets &amp; Advisory for alternative capital and insurance linked securities business, as well as reinsurance broking for managing general agents\/underwriters (MGAs, MGUs) business, as two areas where Howden Re considers itself a leader. For the latter, he revealed that Howden Re places $600bn of reinsurance premium from MGAs or MGUs, excluding its own MGA arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Earlier, the chat touched on UK government engagement with the insurance sector, and Howden highlighted the need for a regulatory environment that encourages growth, referencing the declining percentage of companies choosing to list on the London Stock Exchange in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe reality is, since the 2008 financial crisis, there has been an ever increasing amount of regulation, which, in my view, has stifled growth in the city,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou look at our counterparts across the Atlantic, the size of the American banks since then, their relevance, we have to make sure that we are encouraging growth, and that is about businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cObviously, as business people we get on and grow our businesses \u2013 we do what we need to do &#8211; but we do need a regulatory environment that encourages that as well,\u201d Howden added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Howden Group has evolved to include hundreds of offices in the UK alone, \u201cA Great British story\u201d, as Howden put it. On the retail side, he highlighted distribution as key to growth, since the broker expanded through more broking acquisitions into retail business in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat I&#8217;ve worked out, as I build this business, is that it\u2019s really important to build your distribution,\u201d Howden said, noting that this means not just personal lines but small and midsize corporate business, with people wanting to speak to their broker and understand their insurance needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DUAL, the MGA arm of Howden Group, was set up in 1997. Back then, he acknowledged, MGAs did not have a great reputation \u201clike the chewing gum at the bottom of the shoe\u201d, but hiring the right expertise to develop products \u2013 picking out cyber and warranty indemnity as examples \u2013 has been core to turning this perception around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMGAs are a key part of the market\u2026DUAL has become a substantial business. It writes $3.5bn premium; we\u2019re in 21 countries around the world; we\u2019re truly international,\u201d he said, adding that aside from a deal to buy Align in the US, the onus has been on organic growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Innovation in product design as well as distribution are MGA strengths, he emphasised. Stood outside the Lloyd\u2019s building, Howden \u201ccelebrates the success of MGAs\u201d \u2013 which still \u201craise eyebrows\u201d when they grow fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MGAs have inherited some aspects of the \u201centrepreneurial spirit\u201d that was more common among traditional Lloyd\u2019s market syndicates in the pre Reconstruction and Renewal days when Names investors could invest \u2013 for good or ill \u2013 and entry barriers were lower \u2013 as well as levels of professionalism \u2013 before the advent of the current corporate capital system within the Lloyd\u2019s market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe market has changed dramatically since that time,\u201d he said, emphasising the strength of Lloyd\u2019s today, relative to its teetering status in the early 1990s. \u201cThe really encouraging thing about the market is it is still absolutely the leading insurance market. Every single major broker has representation here. Every single major insurer and reinsurer has representation here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An outside broadcast is a novelty for the Voice of Insurance, but knowing David Howden, CEO of Howden Group, his high-octane energy levels mean a walking tour blog make a lot of sense. The latest Voice of Insurance podcast is a brisk walk through Howden Group\u2019s past, present and future, starting with that original office [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[33,39,14],"line-of-business":[28,20],"class_list":["post-9284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-latest-insights","tag-ils","tag-reinsurance","tag-underwriting-workbench","line-of-business-general-liability","line-of-business-property"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9284","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=9284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9284"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=9284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}