Tell us how you arrived in the insurance industry and about your career before IQUW.
I was in touch with a charity called The Brokerage Citylink, which helps students from low socio-economic areas into City roles. Through them, I got a summer placement with Ark Syndicate on the Energy underwriting team before my economics degree at Portsmouth University. After graduating, I took the retail banking route for a year before returning to insurance on the Travelers graduate scheme in their Power & Utilities team. I worked there for six years before joining IQUW as an Energy Underwriter in 2021.
What attracts you to insurance?
It’s the perfect industry for an individual like me who is both personable and analytical. The human interaction element combined with the job’s complexity means – although I am constantly challenged – I enjoy what I do. I’ve also built meaningful friendships with like-minded people along the way.
What attracted you to Energy?
My earliest experiences of insurance were in an Energy team and I believe that shaped my decision-making process. My six years in Power & Utilities is very relevant too. We wrote midstream risks in my previous team and midstream is also a segment of our Energy portfolio here at IQUW. Energy is always evolving. This creates an opportunity for me to keep learning – which is so important to me.
What are the main trends affecting the Energy sector?
It’s quite an interesting and somewhat challenging marketplace at the moment. Clients are not short of capacity options, so underwriters are having to be even more entrepreneurial about looking for profitable pockets of opportunity and building a sustainable portfolio.
Can you tell me about the IQUW Energy team?
We have a newer Energy book than some of our peers, but we’ve seen great growth over the last four years and had fantastic support from our broker partners.
We have a team of four underwriters led by David Message, who has 35 years of experience in the upstream space. We now also have an engineer, Darryl Krobel, on the team, whose insights will help us make decisions in this complex market environment – especially given our leadership ambitions in segments such as geothermal energy or regions such as Africa.
What differentiates IQUW’s Energy offering?
As a newer market, we don’t have legacy claims so we can be opportunistic. Granted, over-capacity means a lot of markets are chasing the same business, but we are looking for under-developed pockets of the market to focus our efforts. Continuously developing great relationships with the brokers and understanding where there is synergy between us has been key.
Tell us about your contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion.
I lead the LTL Collective, which I founded six years ago, previously known as ‘Ladies That Lunch’. It came out of my experience of being a minority of one in an underwriting team. I wanted to address the discomfort that can come from being underrepresented, but in a positive way. We started as a group of six who met for lunch and talked about our experiences and it naturally grew from there. We now have over 300 women members who connect with this safe space as it suits them. It’s gone way beyond lunches too – now it’s more about networking and signposting people to the right help and opportunities. Providing a safe space to express difficult feelings and having peer mentoring will always remain at the heart of what we do.
At IQUW, I started CARE, which stands for Cultural Appreciation, Race and Ethnicity. The acronym is important as it is intended to show that we care about where you come from and want to celebrate our differences. We try to find ways to help people be better colleagues. Recently, we posted a blog about Ramadan, discussing why it’s important to our Muslim colleagues and how we can be more mindful of their needs while fasting. We also celebrated Black History Month by hosting a showing of the film ‘Hidden Figures’, followed by a discussion about the film’s themes. We now have five DE&I initiatives at IQUW, which I’m very proud of.
