The Voice of Insurance

Ivan Gonzalez, CEO of Swiss Re Corporate Solutions and 25‑year industry veteran, shares his worldview as a decisive leader of a rebuilt global insurer. He discusses strategy and portfolio differentiation. He highlights opportunities in energy, engineering and the data center boom. He explores AI’s operational and liability implications and the tactical role of MGAs.

Richard Milner, CEO of Chaucer Group and veteran underwriter with global experience, shares a down-to-earth five-year strategic plan. He discusses focusing on core underwriting strengths, balancing Lloyd’s and non-Lloyd’s platforms, talent and apprenticeships, measured M&A, and pragmatic moves into AI liability and algorithmic distribution. Practical, focused conversation on where Chaucer will double down.

Today’s guest is one of the best qualified people in the London Market. In a thirty-year career he has been a senior executive right at the top of Lloyd’s and has either chaired or sat on the board of almost all the institutions that underpin the market and represent it to the outside world. Today Sean McGovern is the CEO of UK & Lloyd’s at AXA XL and has just taken over the Chairmanship of the Lloyd’s Market Association (LMA), the trade body that represents corporate capital in Lloyd’s. Sean will speak for both organisations at varying times in our chat today. The timing couldn’t be better. In recent years the LMA has really set the agenda on some of the most strategic developments in the way that underwriting takes place in the subscription market and this discussion goes right to heart of how a future Lloyd’s will underwrite, how business will be brokered and how capital and new talent will access the market. I have been interviewing Sean for twenty years and he has a great skill in communicating in a really eloquent, but also very direct and concise way. He is very good at speaking plainly and making complicated ideas easy to understand. Today’s podcast is no different and this is one of the most broad-reaching and enlightened conversations I have had with anyone since founding the podcast over six years ago. As Lloyd’s embarks on a fresh five-year strategic plan this is a great primer on what all the issues are, where the opportunities lie, and what strategic decisions have to be taken for the market to continue to prosper. NOTES: The latest LMA report is on Lead and Follow. I can highly recommend a read: https://lmalloyds.com/campaigns/lead-and-follow-in-the-lloyds-and-london-market-beyond-the-binary/ And if you haven’t already read the LMA’s seminal publication on Enhanced Underwriting you can access it here LINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

As regular listeners will know, the Voice of Insurance usually interviews people from the global wholesale, speciality insurance and reinsurance end of the market, insuring the type of risks that tend to have to cross borders to find the right type of coverage. Today’s podcast is a slight departure from the norm because I am talking to someone who is working in the general insurance space in the UK. But they are doing so from a wholly original wholesale and tech-enabled angle that also incorporates one of the hot trends of the past few years – embedded insurance. Mark Christer is CEO of Wakam UK, a firm that uses the business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) and MGA models to go to market in niche lines of business where it can stay under the radar of the volume and scale players in the UK’s hyper-competitive market. Wakam UK is the UK subsidiary of the rebranded French insurance group which can boast an illustrious 200-year history as France’s oldest private insurer, La Parisienne. Mark came into insurance because of his work in IT and has enormous experience in the UK market He is the former managing director of personal lines for RSA in the UK, where he looked after the high-profile digital brand More Than. Given Mark’s background it is perhaps unsurprising that Wakam UK is aiming to bring technology, including AI, to speed up the insurance process and go live with new prospects within weeks rather than months. Wakam UK already had reasonable scale in its legacy form, but in its new tech-first guise seems likely to achieve substantial growth. I think regular listeners will learn a lot from Mark and find a lot in common with him. In a world of hype, here is someone with all the experience and knowledge to make the promise become reality. His enthusiasm and positive energy is infectious, so I can highly recommend a listen. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

Today’s podcast is with the CEO of a reinsurer that wrote just under $8 billion dollars of Gross premiums in 2025. Miguel Rosa runs Mapfre Re, a Global Top-20 reinsurer with a reputation for long-term strategic thinking and consistency in an often unstable market. As the reinsurance market softens, at a significantly faster rate than many reinsurers were expecting, it is fascinating to hear Miguel’s view on the prospects for profitable growth in 2026 and beyond. With 2 decades of reinsurance experience, topped off with three years in motor insurance Miguel brings an exceptionally well-rounded perspective to his role. In this podcast we look at the dynamics affecting the reinsurance market and the growth opportunities remaining within it, but we also broaden the discussion out to include more specific themes such as the opportunity in MGAs and AI, both as an aide to operational efficiency and more skilful underwriting, but also as an emerging peril in and of itself. Miguel is great company and the time will pass extremely quickly. I learned a lot and I think you will too. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

I really enjoyed today’s interview because it outlines what is quite an original proposition in a very competitive marketplace. Jonathan Tritton is the Managing Director of Burns & Wilcox Global Solutions, which is the London and International wholesale broking arm of the US-headquartered Kaufman Group. The group has been formed via the coming together of the Chesterfield and Lochain Patrick broking businesses. So far, so familiar, you might say – a US-led broking group with London operations is hardly a big deal. But Jonathan is a recent joiner and the pitch he makes for his new employer is compelling. As the insurance value chain becomes more technologically advanced and much more efficient at allocating the right risks to the right distribution channels and the right forms of underwriting capital, despite the headwinds of the softening market, Jonathan is very optimistic about the growth prospects for his business unit. With a good combination of, sufficient scale and resources to be in the game and an enormous amount of room to grow, Jonathan’s optimism has an authentic ring to it. In this podcast specific growth plans, the digitisation and facilitisation of the market and Jonathan’s ambitions for a Lloyd’s syndicate as well as his thoughts on AI all get a full airing. Jonathan has been on the podcast before and is a very relaxed, eloquent and energetic interviewee, so this is an episode that will fly by. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

Jacqui Ferrier, CEO and co-founder of Carbon Underwriting who transformed a Lloyd’s start-up into a scaled carrier, talks data-driven underwriting and growth. She explains building Graphene, rapid data ingestion, and how transparency with MGAs and capital partners shapes portfolio decisions. Conversations cover MGA selection, consortia strategies, and plans for US expansion and scaling.

Today’s podcast is a first for the Voice of Insurance as this is the first time I have had an interview with a sitting Lady Mayor of London. Sue Langley or, the Right Honourable, the Lady Mayor, Dame Susan Langley, DBE, to give her her full and formal title, has worked in the insurance industry for 28 years, with senior roles at Hiscox, within the Corporation of Lloyd’s and latterly as Chair of the board of Gallagher UK. I have known her for over 20 of those years and throughout that time she has always been strong, direct, completely straightforward and down to earth. So that’s why it was such a pleasure to meet her in her incredibly high-profile, but often misunderstood 800-year-old role. Many of us might go our whole careers working in the City of London but remaining almost wholly ignorant of the workings of some of its most longstanding institutions. So our talk demystifies what the Lord or Lady Mayor position means in 2026 and reveals how Sue discovered the path to becoming its 697th incumbent. Ostensibly an apolitical role, nonetheless the modern Mayoralty has tremendous soft influence in the corridors of power, and as the UK’s effective ambassador for Financial and Professional Services, Sue gets to travel the globe representing all of us. In this podcast we will learn what’s on top of Sue’s agenda for her year in post and I am sure what she says will give all the insurance practitioners listening plenty of good cheer. I am also pleased to report that holding this great office hasn’t changed Sue in the slightest, in fact it is Sue who is doing a lot to make the role more relatable and relevant to our times. Sue is also a physical representation of how the past decade has witnessed the Insurance sector stand up and be counted and start to take its rightful place in the Civic affairs of the City and country in which it trades. Sue certainly won’t be the last Lord or Lady Mayor to be sourced from within the Insurance community and we should take a lot of encouragement from this. So listen on to what is a really informal, enjoyable and enlightening discussion. NOTES & LINKS: More information on Sterling 20 can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britains-biggest-pension-funds-back-regional-growth-drive And you can get involved in the Lord Mayor’s Appeal here: https://www.thelordmayorsappeal.org/ We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

Today’s episode is unique because my guest is pretty unique. Gabriel Holschneider was working as a lawyer 20 years ago when he uncovered a passion for, and an obsession with, captive insurance and started a consultancy and a very small reinsurer with his own money. Then ten years ago he founded an MGA group called XS Global. In 2026 that group is the biggest MGA in Latin America, is fully globalising and is set to write over a billion dollars in gross premiums, often from hard-to reach locations or via niche classes that others find difficult to underwrite. Gabe is a remarkable personality and is building something that is clearly out of the ordinary. I have interviewed lots of people behind fast-growing MGA groups but none of them quite like this, and that is partly because this is a business that wasn’t born out of the traditional Anglo-US axis, where so many of its peers are to be found. It’s refreshing and different. So listen on as Gabe explains the rationale behind the group, the main differentiation points in its modus operandi and where he expects the venture to be heading in the coming years. It’s a breath of fresh air and I can highly recommend a listen. LINKS: XS Global https://xsglobal.com/ Eureka Re https://eurekare.com/ We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com

Marcello Antonucci, Beazley cyber and tech claims lead, explains large-scale cyber incidents and third-party risks. Mandeep Gosal, VP of global professional services, discusses cyber resilience and the challenges of agentic AI. Bethany Greenwood, Group head of specialty risks, covers boardroom exposures, ESG disclosure shifts and tariff-related liability. The conversation surveys geopolitical, AI and infrastructure threats shaping 2026 risk landscapes.