John Cavanagh: Co-founder Beat Capital: Supporting entrepreneurial underwriting at Lloyd's (69)

InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant

InsTech

Entrepreneurship, Investing, Business

4.8 • 50 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2020

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Proving that it's never too late to start a new business, John Cavanagh retired as CEO from Willis Re in 2017 to set up Beat Capital with Tom Milligan (previously Co-CEO of Ariel Re). Today Beat Capital is supporting multiple underwriting businesses, set up by experienced and entrepreneurial underwriters. John has been working for over 45 years in insurance, including 21 years at international specialty reinsurance broker RK Carvill where he was joint CEO. In addition to running Beat Capital, John is Chairman of Slipcase, founded by Alex Hearn. It was a real pleasure to speak to such an experienced and well known figure from the global insurance market. Matthew has known John for many years and he is a long time supporter of the use of technology, data and analytics to enhance underwriting and risk management. This wide-ranging discussion includes: Launching a start-up The importance of Lloyd's in the global insurance market The balance between using analytics and underwriting intuition The role of the new "Syndicate in a box" at Lloyd's (and what that actually means) Why John got involved with Slipcase and why what they do is so relevant for insurance Getting the right work-life balance You can find, read and share the summary of this discussion, along with all our other podcasts at https://www.instech.london/podcasts Membership details and other enquiries: [email protected] InsTech London Podcast Host: Matthew Grant Produced by Simon Fyles: [email protected] Edited by Peter Roach: visualmonkeys.co.uk

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yeah, I'm a passionate believer in the London market and a passionate supporter of Lloyd's,
0:06.0	and I believe genuine in the Lloyd's infrastructure.
0:09.0	We could never have started our business anywhere else but Lloyd's in the way that we did it. Hello and thanks for joining me on this week's episode of the INSDEC London podcast.
0:32.8	Matthew Grant here, one of the partners at INSdeck London.
0:36.0	And this week we have a real treat for you.
0:38.8	I'm talking to a very well-known figure from the London insurance market, John Kavanagh,
0:43.7	who retired from leading one of the largest reinsurance brokers in 2017, only to re-emerge
0:49.9	to co-found a startup, beat capital. This has rapidly established itself as a home for
0:55.3	entrepreneurial underwriters across a range of insurance classes and proving it's never too
0:59.7	late to start a new business. We cover a lot of topics in this one so it's a bit longer
1:04.2	than usual but still less than one minute for every year of John's career. John, John, delighted to have a chance to talk to you. You have got a
1:23.1	career of, I believe, 45 years in insurance. You've been working working in London USA and Bermuda and more
1:30.5	broadly you spent a lot of your time at RK Carville where you were joint CEO then you're at
1:35.8	Willis Rhee when you retired although it wasn't complete retirement because of course now you
1:39.7	have founded B Capital with Tom Milligan which is a capital investment vehicle supporting MGA
1:45.7	startups. Now, we first met about 20 years ago, and at that time you were, I think, probably
1:51.3	one of the people I could count on the fingers of one hand who really went deep into technology
1:56.0	and really sort of understood the future of it. So it's great to see how things have evolved.
2:00.4	Anyways, let's talk a bit about Bates. So what's it like running a startup it. So it's great to see how things have evolved. Anyways, let's talk a bit
2:01.3	about beats. So what's it like running a startup? Yeah, it's great, actually. I mean, it's very
2:07.2	energizing starting a business. I did it once before back in 1984, actually, with three partners,
2:13.3	and we formed an umbrella broker under the auspices of Minette.
	...

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