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CEO Perspectives with Meg Green
The concept is simple: lessons in leadership from global insurance executives. Against a background of climate change, an uneven global recovery, sociopolitical unrest and post-pandemic problems, insurance industry leaders also face big challenges on both sides of the balance sheet, for example around cyber security and other emerging risks, as well as rising inflation and volatile markets. With the advance of digitization, new tools and business models are disrupting the traditional insurance value chain, bringing pressure on businesses to differentiate themselves. A dynamic M&A market is testing re/insurers’ ability to attract and retain the best talent. In conversation with Insider Engage managing editor Meg Green, insurance industry CEOs will share how their career path led them to where they are today, how they have navigated past challenges and how this experience has equipped them to meet the challenges and risks their organisations face today.
CEO Perspectives with Meg Green
The Full Perspective: Convex capital raise, PartnerRe CEO change
Each Friday the Insider Publishing team dissect the week's biggest stories on, The Full Perspective.
This week the team looks at the prospects for Convex’s new capital raising, as we revealed that the carrier was joining the list of firms to seek growth capital in 2020, as well as the CEO transition at PartnerRe, after we spoke to new leader Jacques Bonneau about his plans for the firm.
Key points on Convex include:
- There is no public target size for this fundraise, but a reasonable assumption is that it will look to grow from $1.8bn to the $3bn level it mooted as a goal upon launch. This would give it a bigger balance sheet than other peers such as Beazley.
- Convex sits in a sweet spot for its appeal to PE money looking to enter the sector – it doesn’t have the legacy risk of other established carriers but has a head-start on other 2020 start-ups, as it has already built out a huge team and significant infrastructure and is ready to capture the current market opportunity.
Related reading: https://insuranceinsider.com/articles/134702/convex-sets-wheels-in-motion-on-major-capital-raise
Key points on the PartnerRe CEO transition:
- This is a major changing of the guard as newcomer Jacques Bonneau has taken over from Emmanuel Clarke, whose involvement with PartnerRe stretches back to 1997. Coming just a few months after the reinsurer’s sale to Covea collapsed, the industry will be studying the runes, as editor-in-chief Adam McNestrie put it, for signs on what the transition means for future M&A activity for the firm.
- However Bonneau insists that there has been no discussion of prospects for another sale. Instead, he says the focus is on continuing to improve results after the carrier took a notably steelier approach to earlier 2020 renewals. But can the firm walk a line between maintaining its historic relationship-based approach to renewals while still showing some of this mettle on pricing?
Related reading: https://insuranceinsider.com/articles/134756/bonneau-pledges-to-make-partnerre-a-great-firm-after-average-run