Bob Kimmel the CEO of K2 insurance services came on my radar and that of most other London-based insurance folk when last year his US-based MGA group picked up the remnants of what had been the Pioneer group of MGAs to form K2 International.
K2 owns a major collection of MGAs in the US, writes over a billion dollars in premium and is highly acquisitive both of talent, new agencies and other ancillary insurance businesses
I didn’t know Bob personally and researching K2 ahead of our London meeting I suppose I came into this podcast with lots of preconceptions about what the CEO of such a fast-growing and aggressively expansive US-headquartered group would be like.
I was completely wrong.
Bob is clearly very ambitious for K2 but he is also very easygoing and charming as well as being disarming about how steep the learning curve has been for him, a former reinsurance broker, moving much closer to the end insurance customer in the decade since K2’s formation.
New MGA start-ups and acquisitions, a potential Lloyd’s syndicate in the offing and a conscious hunt for talent in specific classes – Bob’s in-tray is absolutely overflowing and in this interview he discusses all aspects of MGA management in a disarmingly open way.
I really enjoyed my time with Bob and I think you will too.
LINKS
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo - enabling an enterprise view of exposure:
https://www.advantagego.com/
We also thank Claims Direct Access (CDA) and Free Partners for their support today:
https://www.claimsdirectaccess.com/
https://freepartners.com/
Ep146 Alex Blanco CEO Vantage Insurance: Seeking the intellectually curious and mentally ambidextrous
Ep145 Adrian Jones Partner HSCM Ventures: We need to reconsider the word Insurtech
Ep144 Talbir Bains Group CEO Volante Global: I’d rather lose doing the right thing than win doing the wrong thing
Ep143 Chris Cheatham Bold Penguin: Build out now because digital’s definitely working
Ep142 Luke Tanzer CEO RiverStone International: Freeing live underwriters to work the hardening market
Ep141 Building a bigger welcome mat: Matthew Moore and Caroline Wagstaff of the LMG
Special Episode Richard Chattock and Stephen Brittain of Insurtech Gateway: To discontinue the old we must accelerate the new
Ep140 Kate Markham CEO Hiscox London Market: No one-hit wonders
Ep139 Mark Cloutier Group CEO Aspen: Still taking volatility down
Special Episode: Full Digital Ambition. Building a digital-first marketplace
Ep138 Bill Jewett CEO Obsidian Insurance Holdings: Good shepherds of reinsurance capital
Special Episode: The State of (Re)insurance
Ep137: Richard Brindle and Dan Burrows of Fidelis - changing the structure of capital forever
Special Episode: Navigating ESG, with Miqdaad Versi of Oxbow Partners
Ep136 David Howden & Rod Fox: Blurring the Lines
Ep135 Albert Benchimol: An appetite for growth
Special Episode: Matthew Grant & Henry Gale of InsTech. Parametric: where traditional insurers fear to tread
Ep134 Joshua Motta CEO Coalition: Building a Cyber Muscle
Special Charity Episode: You managing your body, not it managing you. With ABF The Soldiers’ Charity
Ep133 Jean-Jacques Henchoz: Not yet hitting the glass ceiling
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
U.S Property Podcast
Aligned Money Show
Gorse Culture PODcast : The H.R. Detective Agency!
The Ramsey Show
Planet Money