The Reinsurance Podcast

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327

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Aug 2026

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Navigating the world of reinsurance can feel complex, but it doesn’t have to be dull. Join Jerad Leigh and Ben Rose—co-founders of Supercede and genuine reinsurance nerds enthusiasts—as they unravel the nuances of market dynamics. With industry expertise, they dive into the trends, challenges, and stories shaping the reinsurance landscape. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just looking for a little more knowledge to ensure the glazing over of eyes at parties, tune in for an engaging journey through the world of reinsurance!

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August 25, 202627 min

Nick Hankin: What Earns a Cedent More Capacity | TRP #178

Nick Hankin spent thirty years buying reinsurance at RSA, Zurich, AXA, AIG and Aviva. Now he runs QBE Re, and he is unusually direct about which cedents get his capacityand which part of the book quietly stops getting renewed. Three months out from 1/1, that is a useful thing to hear said out loud.WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:- How a top-20 reinsurer sorts its book into global, key and transactional clients, and what moves you between them- Why consistency through a softening market buys more capacity than opportunism ever will- Where attachment point discipline needs to hold at 1/1, and where Hankin thinks the market could slip- What a casualty sidecar actually lets a reinsurer say yes to- Why 170 people and a $6bn ambition makes AI a force multiplier rather than a headcount question EPISODE LINKS: Nick's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-hankin-b538595/ QBE Re: https://qbere.com/ CONNECT WITH US: Say Hello: ⁠ producer@thereinsurancepodcast.com ⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.supercede.com⁠ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehq X: ⁠https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQ⁠ YouTube: ⁠ ⁠ ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQ⁠ RSS Feed: ⁠https://anchor.fm/s/7e741c8c/podcast/rss⁠ OUTLINE & TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro & Nick Hankin’s Journey to QBE Re01:53 From Insurance Buyer to Reinsurer03:12 Why Reinsurance Is a People Business04:19 Local Decision-Making, Global Thinking06:27 QBE Re’s Growth Strategy & the Softening Market09:37 Product Innovation & Growth Levers11:12 Sidecars, Parametrics & Emerging Risks14:28 Broker Partnerships & New Markets15:27 Property, Casualty & Market Discipline20:10 AI & the Future of Reinsurance21:56 Attracting Talent & Building the Right Culture23:35 AI Skills, Reverse Mentoring & LLMs25:33 Closing Thoughts

August 18, 202619 min

Build an MGA That Keeps Growing | TRP #177

There's a reliable way to spot a boom in insurance: count the conferences. Cyber got its own, then AI, and now MGA events have taken over the calendar. Tom Spier joins Cordy on The Reinsurance Podcast to work out whether the MGA surge is a real shift in how risk reaches capacity, or just a lot of good underwriters building their own wealth instead of somebody else's. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: Why MGA fortunes track the insurance cycle, and where margin hides when it softens Why underwriting discipline alone won't win capacity in a soft market, and what actually does How insurers are getting their arms around a third of the book they didn't underwrite, from the Fidelis split to Axis's $10bn delegated authority ambition What reinsurers should be asking about an MGA's distribution health instead of reading last year's bordereau Where AI genuinely speeds up MGA quoting, and where it just makes the inbox louder EPISODE LINKS: Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomspier/ BindSignal: https://bindsignal.com/ CONNECT WITH US: Say Hello: ⁠ producer@thereinsurancepodcast.com ⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.supercede.com⁠ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehq X: ⁠https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQ⁠ YouTube: ⁠ ⁠ ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQ⁠ RSS Feed: ⁠https://anchor.fm/s/7e741c8c/podcast/rss⁠ OUTLINE & TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 01:32 MGAs in a Softening Market 02:43 How the MGA Model Works 03:59 What Makes an MGA Stand Out? 05:14 Growth, Distribution & Underwriting Discipline 07:22 How Insurers Manage MGA Portfolios 09:45 How MGA Business Flows Into Reinsurance 10:58 Data, Bordereaux & Assessing Performance 12:44 Why Distribution Health Matters 14:12 AI, Submission Ingestion & the Human Bottleneck 16:14 Will the MGA Boom Keep Going?

August 11, 202629 min

One Spreadsheet Error Away From Disaster | TRP #176

Every reinsurance office has a spreadsheet only one person understands, and this episode is about why that's the industry's biggest quiet risk. Jerad and Ben start by defending spreadsheets properly, Spreadsheet Olympics included, before turning on the very flexibility that makes them dangerous. It's not really about Excel: it's about what happens the day the person who built it doesn't work there anymore. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: Why the industry's "singular greatest key person risk" isn't a person — it's whoever built the spreadsheet they left behind How a single overwritten cell can undo months of pricing or placement work, and why "version 9 vs version 10" rarely tells you what actually changed Why massive spreadsheets grind to a halt, and the workaround actuaries already use to keep them alive What reinsurance can borrow from software engineering's approach to tracking changes, instead of hoping nobody touches the macro Why most firms are already auditing which processes are one bus ride away from disaster CONNECT WITH US: Say Hello: ⁠ producer@thereinsurancepodcast.com ⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.supercede.com⁠ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehq X: ⁠https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQ⁠ YouTube: ⁠ ⁠ ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQ⁠ RSS Feed: ⁠https://anchor.fm/s/7e741c8c/podcast/rss⁠ OUTLINE & TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro01:00 Why Reinsurance Loves Spreadsheets02:19 From Spreadsheet Olympics to Spreadsheet Risk05:14 When Spreadsheet Utility Starts to Break Down08:23 Why Replacing Excel Is So Hard11:30 The Problem with “Utopian” Spreadsheets14:06 Key-Person Dependency & the Bus Factor17:12 Keeping Flexibility, Adding Auditability20:04 Rethinking Data Transformation23:19 What Reinsurance Can Learn from GitHub24:57 What Shouldn’t Live in a Spreadsheet28:37 Spreadsheet Dystopia & Outro

August 4, 202621 min

Maurits Van Joolingen: The Insurability Crisis No One Is Pricing In | TRP #175

Everyone in reinsurance obsesses over the claims side of the balance sheet: what happens when things go wrong. Maurits Van Joolingen, Managing Director of Climate Scenarios & Sustainability at Ortec Finance, spends his time on the assets insurers actually hold, and whether the models pricing that risk are dangerously optimistic. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: Why the industry-standard NGFS climate scenarios might be underestimating the real risk How nonlinear warming assumptions change the math on portfolio exposure What a 25%-uninsurable-housing scenario means for insurers' long-term business models Why divesting from high-emission sectors might be the wrong move for asset owners How leading insurers are moving from "raising awareness" to actually changing capital allocation EPISODE LINKS: Maurits's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mauritsvanjoolingen/ Ortec Finance: https://www.ortecfinance.com/ CONNECT WITH US: Say Hello: ⁠ producer@thereinsurancepodcast.com ⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.supercede.com⁠ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehq X: ⁠https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQ⁠ YouTube: ⁠ ⁠ ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQ⁠ RSS Feed: ⁠https://anchor.fm/s/7e741c8c/podcast/rss⁠ OUTLINE & TIMESTAMPS:00:00 - Intro03:44 - The Two Ways Insurers Model Climate Risk06:10 - Why Ortec Bets on Nonlinear Climate Risk08:00 - From Awareness to Decisions: Where Scenarios Fell Short08:57 - Why 25% of Housing Could Become Uninsurable by 205010:47 - Why You Can't Just Pull Out of a High-Risk Region11:45 - Should Governments Backstop Climate Risk for Insurers?13:15 - What Should Risk Officers Be Doing Right Now?15:37 - Are Clients Waking Up to the NGFS's Blind Spots?16:51 - Regulators, Governance, and the Case for Scenario Planning18:08 - What's Next: Blending Top-Down and Bottom-Up Models20:44 - Closing Thoughts

July 14, 202626 min

James Rendell: Why Your Cat Model Is Blind to Secondary Perils | TRP #175

Better cat modelling isn't just about avoiding bad risk, it's about finding and writing the good risk your competitors are mispricing. James Rendell, CEO of BirdsEyeView, saw that gap and convinced the European Space Agency to back him, and built something that the big vendors hadn't properly tackled. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:- Why secondary perils like wildfire and severe convective storms are fundamentally harder to model than hurricanes — and how to tackle that properly- How year-old fuel data makes most wildfire models quietly unreliable, and what it means for your next renewal- Why a higher-resolution cat model is a revenue tool, not just a risk-avoidance one — and how soft market conditions make this more urgent- The meaningful difference between physics-based machine learning models and LLMs when you need to explain your risk view to an actuary- How an ESA-backed startup went from contingency market niche to a cat modelling platform used across Lloyd's syndicates, Australian cover holders, US MGAs and beyondTIMESTAMPS:00:00 James Rendell: from broker to insurtech founder01:54 BirdsEyeView and the ESA05:34 The cat modelling landscape07:00 The contingency market gap09:30 Why secondary perils are harder to model12:35 Wildfire, SCS, and building better models14:10 Physics, machine learning, and satellite data16:06 The fuel data problem18:00 AI and the future of cat modelling21:50 Soft market advantage: write more premium

July 7, 202629 min

2030 Reinsurance Predictions We Might Regret | TRP #174

Jerad and Ben skip the small talk and jump straight to 2030, asking the one question worth asking about AI and reinsurance: what actually changes, and what's just getting a shinier coat of paint. They cover cat models, capital allocation, contract structuring, dying market standards, and an industry expense ratio that's somehow gone up instead of down. No guest this week — just two hosts making predictions they might regret. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: Why AI-driven cat modeling might be the one part of reinsurance that actually gets faster and better, not just different Why the relationship-driven, napkin-deal side of the business probably won't look any different in 2030 Why the market's expense ratio has crept up instead of down despite a decade of technology investment, and what that says about how the industry should be valuing tech spend in the first place Why rigid market standards and clause libraries might not survive contact with natural language processing Why nobody's handing a nine-figure placement to an autonomous agent any time soon, and where automation actually helps instead CONNECT WITH US: Say Hello: ⁠ producer@thereinsurancepodcast.com ⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.supercede.com⁠ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehq X: ⁠https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQ⁠ YouTube: ⁠ ⁠ ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQ⁠ RSS Feed: ⁠https://anchor.fm/s/7e741c8c/podcast/rss⁠ OUTLINE & TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 01:09 Has reinsurance actually changed by 2030 02:11 Cat models get the biggest AI upgrade in the industry 04:44 How AI reshapes reinsurer portfolio and capital strategy 05:46 Why brokers couldn't care less whose paper it is 07:21 Alternative capital's coopetition with reinsurers 08:06 Testing five contract structures before lunch 10:48 The expense ratio problem nobody in reinsurance can explain 12:25 What Silicon Valley's AI spend says about return on investment 14:50 Is AI reinsurance's Concorde, or its Metaverse 18:23 Why natural language could kill reinsurance market standards 21:53 Would you hand a $50m placement to an autonomous agent 25:07 The most impactful reinsurance app was never built for reinsurance 26:53 Monte Carlo, quants, and the last of the 2030 predictions

June 30, 202624 min

Why Brokers Lose Clients (and How to Fix It) | TRP #173

Reinsurance brokers are famous for remembering the small things — the underwriter's dog, the client's restaurant preference at Monte Carlo, whose birthday party they attended last spring. Less famous for: knowing why that market got signed down two renewals ago, or finding the email that explains a call a colleague is now questioning. This episode is about that gap, and why it costs more than the industry admits. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: Why annual reinsurance cycles mean brokers are always working from memories 12+ months old — and how that memory decays faster than anyone acknowledges What most firms actually track (signings, authorisations, quotes) — and why the gaps between those tiers quietly kill your leverage at renewal How staff movement strips firms of institutional knowledge, and what that means when a competitor tries to poach your client mid-RFP Why charming a counterparty and remembering their portfolio history aren't interchangeable — and why one without the other falls apart What CEO-to-CEO meetings could look like if the full relationship picture were actually accessible, not just a deal snapshot TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 01:34 Is closing the deal the end of the story? 02:13 How value leaks during & after placement 05:00 The email archive problem 08:00 What firms actually track 09:15 When human memory becomes institutional memory 12:00 Staff turnover and the knowledge exodus 14:20 Why brokers keep losing RFPs 16:00 Horror stories from the archives 17:15 Prepping meetings with half the picture 20:30 The case for technical recall CONNECT WITH US: Say Hello: ⁠ producer@thereinsurancepodcast.com ⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.supercede.com⁠ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehq X: ⁠https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQ⁠ YouTube: ⁠ ⁠ ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQ⁠ RSS Feed: ⁠https://anchor.fm/s/7e741c8c/podcast/rss⁠ OUTLINE & TIMESTAMPS:

June 10, 202624 min

How to Win a Soft Market Without Burning Bridges | TRP #172

In a softening reinsurance market, it’s tempting to chase the cheapest capacity, squeeze every last point out of pricing, and call it a win. But that’s how you burn bridges. In this episode, Ben and Jerad unpack how cedents and brokers should approach renewal season when capital is abundant, pricing pressure is building, and everyone suddenly has options again. CONNECT WITH US: Say Hello: ⁠ producer@thereinsurancepodcast.com ⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.supercede.com⁠ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehq X: ⁠https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQ⁠ YouTube: ⁠ ⁠ ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQ⁠ RSS Feed: ⁠https://anchor.fm/s/7e741c8c/podcast/rss⁠ OUTLINE & TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 01:06 Soft Market Strategies 02:17 New Narratives & Softening Conditions 03:49 Cedents: Opportunity or Trap? 06:24 How Poor Data Damages Relationships 08:27 The Broker’s Role in a Soft Market 09:11 Price Cuts vs Long-Term Partnerships 11:31 Why Hammering Existing Partners Can Backfire 15:20 A Benign Cat Year… But What Comes Next? 19:14 Spotting Gaps Across Programmes 20:23 Using the Soft Market to Rethink Structures 21:23 Broker Nimbleness & Proactive Ideas 24:09 Closing Thoughts

June 2, 202618 min

How Challenger Brokers Are Winning Clients in a Soft Market | TRP #171

Reinsurance brokers invest heavily in analytics, cat models, and back-office systems. Almost none of it faces the client. In a softening market where cheaper reinsurance is table stakes, Ben Rose and Tom Spier break down why the broker-client relationship is the one that actually needs the technology — and why most firms have completely overlooked it. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: Why getting clients a cheaper deal is no longer enough to keep their business in a soft market How challenger brokers backed by private equity are forcing the big three to rethink their value proposition The structural reason brokers can't build client-facing tools in-house (and why clients don't want them to) Why the broker who meets the client where they already work will win over the one with the flashiest portal What cedents should be looking for when choosing between ten credible brokers instead of three CONNECT WITH US: Say Hello: ⁠ producer@thereinsurancepodcast.com ⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.supercede.com⁠ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehq X: ⁠https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQ⁠ YouTube: ⁠ ⁠ ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQ⁠ RSS Feed: ⁠https://anchor.fm/s/7e741c8c/podcast/rss⁠ OUTLINE & TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro01:57 How Supercede Started04:06 The Real Friction Isn't Between Broker and Underwriter05:54 The Broker Landscape: From Big Three to Top Fifteen08:13 Hard Market vs Soft Market: How Broker Value Shifts09:19 Cheap Reinsurance Is Table Stakes — Now What?10:31 What Brokers Actually Spend Their Tech Budgets On12:34 The Gap: Nothing Between Broker and Client13:56 Why In-House Portals Don't Work for Clients14:48 Analytics & the PDF Report Problem16:08 Meeting Clients Where They Are17:48 Minimising Change Management by Using Existing Workflows

May 20, 202632 min

Your Reinsurance Tech Isn't Making You Money | TRP #170

Since cat modelling landed in the early '90s, nothing in reinsurance tech has stuck with the same force. Blockchain, digital exchanges, Blueprint 2 — the graveyard is long. Ben Rose and Tom Spier trace the history of failed innovation and land on a question the industry still hasn't answered well: if efficiency doesn't move the needle and speed doesn't matter, what does technology in reinsurance actually need to do? WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: Why the efficiency argument falls flat in reinsurance — and what to pitch instead How blockchain's transparency killed its own value proposition in a market built on information asymmetry The chicken-and-egg problem that buried most market-wide adoption plays Why single-player value — tech that works even if nobody else uses it — is the pattern that survives What AI actually changes for reinsurance software and where vibe-coded solutions will fall short TIMESTAMPS:(00:00) Intro(01:57) Cat Modelling: The Last Innovation That Stuck(04:58) The Graveyard — Why Digital Reinsurance Keeps Failing(06:50) Reinsurance Is Not a Commodities Market(09:00) Digitisation vs. Digitalisation — What Actually Adds Value(10:49) The Efficiency Trap — Why It Doesn't Move the Needle(14:47) Speed, Timing and Precision — The Real Nuance(15:17) Blockchain's Transparency Problem(17:02) Information Asymmetry and Why It Matters(17:56) The Chicken-and-Egg Adoption Problem(19:54) AI's Promise — And the Vibe Coding Trap(22:37) Niche Software, Common Standards and Interoperability(26:27) Why the Placement Process Hasn't Changed(27:20) Trust, Relationships and £100M Decisions(31:39) Will Robots Be at Monte Carlo This Year? CONNECT WITH US:Say Hello: producer@thereinsurancepodcast.com Website: https://www.supercede.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehq X: https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQ RSS Feed: https://anchor.fm/s/7e741c8c/podcast/rss