{"id":9914,"date":"2025-03-24T09:12:43","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T09:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"httpss:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/?p=9914"},"modified":"2025-03-24T09:12:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T09:12:46","slug":"voi-podcast-with-lucy-clarke-president-of-risk-and-broking-at-wtw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/voi-podcast-with-lucy-clarke-president-of-risk-and-broking-at-wtw\/","title":{"rendered":"WTW&#8217;s &#8216;sleeves rolled up&#8217; attitude post-Aon setback drew me to the firm &#8211; Lucy Clarke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Ep245 Lucy Clarke: Sleeves Rolled Up\" 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=bcau3-1848130-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>WTW was in trouble. Most of the world had believed the Aon takeover was a done deal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, in July 2021, Aon announced it was scrapping the acquisition bid amid intense regulatory scrutiny over market monopolisation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;A whole bunch of people had left the business. They didn&#8217;t want to be part of a merged business. We weren&#8217;t being invited to client tenders anymore,&#8221; explains Clarke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We weren&#8217;t doing reinsurance anymore. We&#8217;d lost a significant amount of business, and so it was an incredibly tough period for that group of people\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet, adversity breeds strength, and the aftermath of Aon fostered a &#8216;sleeves rolled up&#8217; culture that attracted talented insurance executives like Clarke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clarke&#8217;s career is steeped in insurance. It includes President of Marsh JLT Speciality and 22 years at JLT group in various roles.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She joined as President of Risk and Broking in July 2024.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clarke enthuses: &#8220;One of the things that I&#8217;ve consistently said that was so attractive to me about joining here was to join a group of people who could pull off what these people have pulled off.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Digital leaders<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following the failed Aon takeover, WTW launched a &#8216;leading digital strategy&#8217;, explains Clarke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was updated in December last year.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The WTW broking platform, now operational in 18 countries, can seamlessly receive and structure data, create submissions, and run core models for market outreach.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently, about 25% of premiums are processed through this platform, with expectations to increase to 90% in the top eight countries by the end of the year and full implementation by 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>WTW has developed Neuron, an advanced digital trading platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clarke explains &#8216;think of it like an API connecting the broking platform to the markets&#8217;.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The platform enables algorithmic underwriting and automatic follow-on rules.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It should be &#8216;up and running&#8217; during 2025.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She says: &#8220;I think it&#8217;s important to remember we&#8217;re not envisaging some world where everything is done by a digital placement. It is just to make the transaction easier and smoother. And there&#8217;ll be different solutions depending on what segment of the market you&#8217;re in.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Artificial Intelligence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently, WTW is primarily using AI to convert unstructured data into structured formats and to analyse policy documents.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This involves comparing clients&#8217; contracts with insurance products to identify any gaps in coverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Geoghegan said: &#8220;It&#8217;s always difficult to try and value. What are the terms and conditions actually worth? I suppose that would be something that&#8217;d be fantastic to get an AI to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clarke replied: &#8220;There are those capabilities for sure. We&#8217;re just monitoring it really carefully.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Market conditions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The conversation then turned to the hard market.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Underwriters believe they are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/underwriting-first-for-underwriting-profitability\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/underwriting-first-for-underwriting-profitability\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">prioritising underwriting profit<\/a> and maintaining rate adequacy, with talk of writing for income subsiding.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clarke said: &#8220;I definitely think there&#8217;s still discipline in the market, but I think that the market&#8217;s being more reasonable about where it is and to make sure that clients get recognised. This has not been an easy period of time for them.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MGA strategy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another discussed topic was managing general agents, detailed in the December strategy outlook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a perception that MGAs are cyclical. But Clarke stressed they are &#8216;here to stay&#8217;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She said: &#8220;MGAs are providing an important role in the market for us. Specifically, we have our Verita MGA in the US.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll be launching that in Great Britain and in Europe later this year, and I think that it&#8217;s a really important part of the strategy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Our MGA strategy is sort of like niche products where there&#8217;s a scarcity of capacity and also a way to distribute our Willis proprietary facilities throughout the group.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>&#8216;Very excited&#8217; about reinsurance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clarke told Geoghegan she was &#8216;very excited&#8217; about the reinsurance opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In September last year, WTW revealed it would team up with Bain Capital to build a reinsurance unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This comes after it sold the reinsurance arm to Gallagher in 2021 for \u00a33.25bn because of the Aon sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We are very lucky to have Bain, who&#8217;ve been amazing to work with. They bring huge firepower,&#8221; Clarke says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I think we have a real once in a generation opportunity to build a reinsurance business of quality and scale.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WTW was in trouble. Most of the world had believed the Aon takeover was a done deal.&nbsp; However, in July 2021, Aon announced it was scrapping the acquisition bid amid intense regulatory scrutiny over market monopolisation.&nbsp; &#8220;A whole bunch of people had left the business. They didn&#8217;t want to be part of a merged business. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"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":[39,14],"line-of-business":[28,20],"class_list":["post-9914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-latest-insights","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\/9914","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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9914\/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=9914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9914"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=9914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}