Ep223 Rachel Turk CUO at Lloyd’s: No legitimacy without profitability

I would have to spend some time checking the numbers, but today’s guest is the Chief Underwriting Officer who oversees arguably the largest amount of Gross written premium in the world.

That’s because Rachel Turk is really a Chief, Chief Underwriting Officer who oversees forty to fifty of her peers in the $70 billion dollar Lloyd’s market.

Whatever the final numbers, her job gives her one of the best vantage points anywhere in global insurance, so learning what she thinks is incredibly useful.

Also given the authority she wields, it’s incredibly important to know, why she’s thinking what she’s thinking and how those thoughts might be turned into actions in the Lloyd’s market.

Given the pivotal importance of the job and the huge diversity within the Lloyd’s market, being a strong communicator and being relatively easy to read must be highly desirable qualities in a candidate for a role such as this.

Happily Rachel is a brilliantly clear communicator – what you see is what you get.

Sometimes interviewing people in very senior, very sensitive jobs like this I have to grapple with cryptic answers or political-style evasion techniques where the difficult questions seem to be there to be avoided.

There’s absolutely none of that in the interview that follows. Rachel is a blast of new energy with a refreshingly down-to-earth and approachable personality.

In this podcast we rattle through a tour of where Rachel sees the Lloyd’s portfolio and global insurance and reinsurance markets today and more importantly in what directions she is looking to nudge and steer the market in the future.

A listen will give you a really clear idea on where Rachel stands on overall performance, casualty rate adequacy, reinsurance at Lloyd’s, captives, innovation, the opportunities for profitable growth and even AI.

You’ll also come away with a pretty clear idea of what she would be like to deal with.

It became clear to me that she’s an underwriter’s underwriter. Having sat on the other side of the table she really understands the commercial pressures that underwriters face in the real world.

But because she has sat in those shoes she can recognise all the ways that even the smartest underwriters might start to repeat the mistakes of the past.

I really enjoyed this. I think this is one of the best Episodes of the year so far and can highly recommend a listen.

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