It’s not often that young, successful underwriters walk away from their roles, but that’s precisely what AEGIS London’s Calum Williams did. Last year, having built a career as a terrorism underwriter and in what AEGIS calls differentiated underwriting’, Calum gave up his pen. Not to leave the business. No, to take a sideways step into what Calum sees as the future of the London insurance market. Calum’s gone digital.
After a spell in broking and four years with AEGIS London, Calum is now the business’s digital development manager. That gives him responsibility for overseeing the distribution of products on Opal, AEGIS London’s award-winning quote-and-bind online platform. Also within his purview is the development of new products for the platform.
Bridging the digital gap
“The team is bridging the gap between underwriting and the technical people,” Calum explains. “The way the London market’s going – embracing data and digitalisation – the digital side of the business seems a good place to be. Even in the five years I’ve been with AEGIS London, our digital capabilities have grown significantly. In another five years, they will have expanded exponentially.”
Calum believes his career trajectory will be replicated by young professionals across the London market. “I think we’ll see more of this,” he says. “As more businesses set up digital offerings, we’re going to see more underwriters making the move towards the digital side of their businesses. It is also a great opportunity to attract new talent with a wide diversity of skills to the market – particularly those skilled in data science or data analytics who may have previously felt they weren’t able to utilise those skills in the insurance market.”
Opal is now eight years old. While Calum is clear there were challenges in building and launching the platform, it has become a significant part of AEGIS London’s revenue stream while shaping the team’s thinking about the market’s future. “I think the key was that we didn’t just sit and complain about the problems and inefficiencies; we got on with solving them. There are inevitable changes to the way we build and distribute insurance products, and it’s great to be part of a team trying to solve those problems and implement that change.”
Not technical
Being on the digital side of AEGIS London doesn’t mean that Calum’s had to embark on a crash course in coding and front-end engineering. Quite the contrary; Calum is adamant that he’s not ‘technical’. “I’m developing products from an underwriter’s standpoint,” he explains.
“I research the market with brokers, build them in terms of underwriting, wording and data requirements and then hand them to our Change Team to build within Opal.”
According to Calum, his biggest challenge is to ensure that new Opal products actually solve a problem. “We really understand the importance of fully scoping the market, the demand and identifying the solution that product will provide. It’s not about creating products underwriters want to build, it’s about building products insureds want to buy. We’ve seen a
lot of new products with some really clever technology that wasn’t actually solving a risk- related problem. Opal and our products do.”
The need to find the problem extends beyond individual products to Opal itself – a platform that effectively allows a much wider range of MGAs and coverholders instant access to the Lloyd’s market and to buy cover in a much more cost and time effective manner. “Opal extends our distribution and reach within the US and Canada, and increases our relevance to our clients, which is vitally important for us.”
A powerful idea
Since launch, Opal’s user base has grown widely. Why? “First, speed is imperative,” Calum says. “It solves a problem for them. They may see it in a slightly different way to us – but the instant access to quotes and the ability to bind can be the difference between retaining or losing a renewal. Second, there is a real need for our products, particularly the wind deductible buy-down which is filling a problematic gap in their programmes. The next stage in Opal’s evolution is to make it a go-to marketplace as we build out new products and explore hosting third party products.”
AEGIS London’s digital trading division, in which Calum sits, is agnostic about the route by which premium flows into the business. “There is a digital world beyond Opal that we’re exploring,” says Calum. “That contains things like smart follow platforms, APIs, embedded distribution…all these streams are growing daily.”
As AEGIS London launches its first digital market campaign this year, Calum is confident that the business is primed to be in the front row of Lloyd’s businesses harnessing the power of digital trading. “It still all about people,” he says. “But OPAL helps bring those people and AEGIS London a little closer and a lot faster.”
That’s what happens when you go digital.
Scan here to download the app