Accessing London for commercial advantage – a coverholder’s perspective
As part of a new series of articles focusing on the commercial advantages for accessing London, we reached out to Greg Markell, President and CEO of Ridge Canada Cyber Solutions (RCCS), to understand from a coverholder’s perspective how they benefit commercially from accessing the London market.
Accessing London for commercial advantage – a coverholder’s perspective
As part of a new series of articles focusing on the commercial advantages for accessing London, we reached out to Greg Markell, President and CEO of Ridge Canada Cyber Solutions (RCCS), to understand from a coverholder’s perspective how they benefit commercially from accessing the London market.
An introduction to Greg Markell and Ridge Canada Cyber Solutions (RCCS)
Greg is President and CEO of Ridge Canada Cyber Solutions (RCCS). Ridge Canada is a managing general agent, focused on providing insurance solutions for clients’ cyber and privacy needs and, more recently, launched several other product lines including Technology E&O and D&O. Greg also provides wholesale solutions to retail brokers, along with consulting work regarding cyber and privacy insurance programs.
Greg began his career in 2007 underwriting for a large national insurer, starting in property and casualty before quickly moving into executive and professional risk. He became a broker firstly at a national brokerage and then a global top ten becoming increasingly focused on cyber coverages, Greg then held various positions at different brokerages before becoming President and CEO of RCCS in his present role, in 2016.
01. How does your business use London?
We use London in a variety of ways. When we first started out, we began wholesaling RCCS specific products. In order to add value to our retail partners we didn’t want to be wholesaling off the shelf insurance products. We therefore started off with proprietary product enhancements, working towards delegated underwriting authority (DUA).
In the present time, we are not wholesaling as much as this is not in our long-term strategy, we are extremely selective in our wholesaling business.
We are focusing on DUA, we have a full delegated authority and utilise lineslips for pre-arranged dedicated capacity requiring London lead only underwriter sign off. This complements our binder bringing additional capacity in to play for our clients. This is typically how we access London.
02. How did you first learn about Accessing London?
I trained at a domestic insurance company, with very little exposure to international markets. In 2010, I moved to Jones Brown, a broker who had a relationship with the London market and Miller too. I took many trips to London, where I learnt more about the market.
The first of these trips need mentioning because I was delighted to be selected for the Lloyd’s Broker Academy in 2010. This was my first true experience with the London market. The Academy provided me the foundation getting to know how Lloyd’s functioned, immersing myself in that educational week and meeting people really catalysed the start of my career.
Many relationships that I formed then, I still have now (as friends and business partners!). I attribute a whole lot of my learned experience from that first week of the Lloyd’s Broker Academy.
03. What do you see as the advantages for Accessing London?
As a business we leverage the London experience and Lloyd’s as a marketplace.
As the cyber market normalises, Lloyd’s and the London marketplace fosters innovation, bringing the “think tank” related approach. The London market puts a lot of focus on doing what’s right for the industry and is a key industry voice from a regulatory perspective. It is also never forgotten the fact that we are client focused, and this is a major advantage.
The capacity component is also an important advantage to note. As capacity opens up globally, the expertise in the London market shines! Canada as a territory gets access to lots of markets, however London gets the most visibility.
The London market also has access to data that is critical to decision making for loss patterns and what is going on in wider international markets, including the US, Australia, Europe and the Middle East.
If you look at the total number of Canadian insurers that are in my line of business, there are not many, and those that are, have a heavy propensity to buy reinsurance across that portfolio, which comes from international markets. The international visibility that London has, aids augmented control-based risk management and control-based philosophies.
04. How do you maintain momentum and relationships with London?
The main way we maintain momentum and relationships with our London partners is visiting! We frequently visit London, and we also love to host our London partners in Canada. Over the years we have brought over a number of colleagues.
Getting our more junior team members involved with London’s education programmes is also a great way to build relationships and maintain momentum. A member of our team has just finished the Lloyd’s Broker Academy last fall and spoke fondly of his experience.
Having face-to-face conversations with people is so important to us. One of the key advantages of Lloyd’s is that it’s one of the last face-to-face trading marketplaces in the world and that’s not lost on us! We really want to be visible to the people we are trading with and working with.
Seeing our London partners face-to-face gives us the ability to forge stronger relationships, simply by seeing people and getting to know them. We really see it as a partnership! Technology moves very quickly, and as we continue to invest in market-leading technologies to layer into our underwriting, open and transparent dialogue that is focused on longevity, as opposed to short term profitability, is truly paramount. Having open feedback and discussions on what’s working and what’s not working so well is so important in developing business momentum and relationships. Having our underwriters spend time with trading partners is paramount to everything and this builds trust. It ensures we deliver on what we say we are going to do!
05. Anything else you want to mention on this topic based on your insight and experience?
Overall, gaining experience of the London market by travelling and education is paramount to successfully navigating the market and understanding and utilising all of the benefits that it provides. Our partners see us as true partners – our agenda is transparent. We have open discussions about products that are taking hold in international markets and then correlating them to whether there is the potential for success in Canada. We are not a testing ground, and any product development we do is very strategic.
Having these deep-rooted, international relationships and being true partners, even across the Atlantic, is an important long term and sustainable mind set then needs to be prioritised.
As we all work together to provide risk transfer solutions, we need to focus on how to continuously improve to provide an efficient and joint-up client service approach. In order to help strengthen the overall industry to be able to provide feedback to the regulators and help clients with their challenges.
Client service remains at the very heart of what we do and having access to the London market helps us to meet client needs.