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Chief Executive Officer
Aon Benfield (Bermuda) Ltd.
Hamilton, Bermuda

Clutch in Retro Coverage

"Power Broker" describes what Robert W. Bisset is for clients, but not his "down-to-earth" demeanor, a client observed.

Bisset, 41, gets results without being overpowering, the client said.

For the client, no better example was the retrocessional earthquake coverage Bisset placed a few weeks after the devastating Chilean temblor on Feb. 27. The client sustained losses in the earthquake and its coverage was the first one up for renewal in the retrocessional market afterward, the client said.

"It was a bit of a test case," he said, noting that the reinsurer was concerned it would not find sufficient capacity at reasonable rates. But Bisset helped retrocessional markets "feel comfortable" with the client's loss and completed the April 1 renewal on time, fully subscribed and "at a fair price," the client said. He also brought in a few new markets to replace some that had dropped out, the client said.

The 16-year intermediary veteran has such a good feel for each market's risk appetite and "for what's going on around him" in the market, another client said. "He buys you a lot of time by being so plugged into the market."

Bisset also gets personally involved in deals, and it makes a difference, the client said. For that reinsurer, Bisset refused to walk away from a retro market the reinsurer had "written off" for a "unique product," and the reinsurer ultimately agreed to participate in the program. Without that personal effort, "there's no way those guys would have come on board," the client said.

Head of Carrier Management-Australia
Aon Benfield, Australia Ltd.
Sydney, Australia

Standing After the Fire

At 38, Matt Botfield already is a 20-year reinsurance industry veteran.

Not only that, but he's also "the best catastrophe broker in the Australian market," said Tony Smith, executive manager for Suncorp Group-Reinsurance in Sydney, Australia.

Suncorp has the world's largest reinsurance property/casualty program, which came up for renewal this year after the company suffered substantial losses in Australia's deadly bushfires last year, Smith said. The sweeping fires, in which nearly 200 people perished and hundreds more were injured, destroyed thousands of buildings in Victoria.

Despite Suncorp's losses, Botfield helped the insurer place the largest catastrophe reinsurance program in the world this year, which provided Suncorp even greater coverage than it already had, Smith said. The $800 million (Australian) of property aggregate coverage, which Botfield was instrumental in designing, sits below Suncorp's main group retention. Dozens of reinsurers participate in the program, and each one was negotiated with individually, Smith noted. Suncorp, however, was not willing to secure the coverage at any price. It set a budget, and Botfield negotiated the deal within the insurer's budget constraints.

In addition, Smith noted, Botfield did not offer Suncorp just one program design option. He submitted two other alternatives that the insurer analyzed for months.

Botfield also doesn't disappear for months at a time; he keeps the insurer informed about ongoing developments within the reinsurance market, Smith said.

Executive Managing Director
Aon Benfield
Minneapolis

Seven Days a Week

David Cameron sleeps only four hours a night and works seven days a week, marveled a reinsurance executive.

"The amount of time he puts into the business is like no one else," said the executive, who not only writes coverage for the intermediary's clients but also places his own organization's reinsurance and retrocessional coverages through him.

Cameron, already a 21-year brokerage veteran at age 44, is one of only a few senior brokers who gets elbow-deep in negotiations rather than delegate the gritty work to junior staff, the executive noted. That personal effort pays off for Cameron's clients, he said. The reinsurer noted that Cameron places the largest U.S. catastrophe program in the market. After a couple of uneventful years, he noted, Cameron placed the $4.5 billion limit program in a brisk one-and-a-half weeks this year during visits to reinsurers on both sides of the Atlantic. But Cameron does not handle only slam-dunk renewals.

For example, for a client that does not have a sparkling reputation within the reinsurance market, Cameron recently negotiated a renewal with aggregate terms that provides sideways coverage "we didn't think he'd get," said the executive, who didn't participate in the placement. He did, and at a good price from high quality reinsurers. That transaction, however, was not all about inking the cheapest deal, the reinsurer said, noting that it also involved a more traditional and costly per-occurrence reinsurance structure that enhanced coverage for the client. Cameron demonstrated to his client that "the cheapest deal wasn't the best one."

Partner
TigerRisk Partners
Garden City, N.Y.

Roadblock Remover

To reinsurance executive John Berger, Geraldine Elizabeth Del Prete is the intermediary to call upon for the toughest of reinsurance placements. "If you told me I had to have a placement and had to get it done in 24 hours, she would be the one person I'd pick," said Berger, vice chairman and chief executive officer of reinsurance for Altera Reinsurance Ltd. in Hamilton, Bermuda.

To Joe Boren, chief executive officer of the environmental division at Ironshore Inc., Del Prete, 54, is a "game-changer."

When Ironshore Environmental opened for business last year, it faced major roadblocks in marketing to policyholders. But Del Prete knocked those aside with the program she designed, Boren said. He explained that insurance buyers, many of which want multiyear policies, are reluctant to purchase such extended coverage from a new market that has not demonstrated its staying power.

Compounding the problem, environmental coverage losses had mounted recently, so the prospect of attracting reinsurers "looked bleak," Boren said.

Del Prete, an 18-year intermediary veteran, responded by arranging for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. unit National Fire & Marine Insurance Co. to write the coverage on its paper, with Ironshore essentially acting as a managing general agent on the front end of the placement--marketing and underwriting the coverage. "That allowed me, as a startup, to have the strongest paper" in the environmental insurance market, Boren said.

Partner
TigerRisk Partners
Stamford, Conn.

Service and Creativity

That's what insurance executive Mitch Sattler was looking for when he switched reinsurance intermediaries last summer, and it is what he found with Marc Lauricella.

Sattler, president and chief executive officer of six-year-old Gulfstream Property & Insurance Co. of Sarasota, Fla., switched property reinsurance intermediaries with the expectation of seeing a significant boost in service.

"We were right," as Lauricella, 47, and his team delivered all Sattler had hoped for.

With the 21-year veteran of reinsurance brokering leading Gulfstream's property reinsurance placement, the insurer obtained the kind of reinsurance protection it sought rather settling for only what the market was willing to offer, Sattler noted. The new reinsurance program structure for Gulfstream includes aggregate coverage that spans multiple events, and it "plugs a lot of holes" in various areas, Sattler explained.

Lauricella also worked into the Gulfstream reinsurance program the $10 million of limits that a Florida state-run facility offers insurers with less than $25 million of surplus. Sattler said Lauricella and his team worked diligently to figure out the optimal placement of the Florida coverage within Gulfstream's program, even though TigerRisk did not earn a fee on the Florida coverage. Sattler noted that a more traditional reinsurance program would have been more difficult to negotiate and would have been more costly. "We really got the feeling his guys were working for us," Sattler said of Lauricella.

Vice Chairman-Americas
Aon Benfield
New York

The Can-Do Harvard Man

Roderick P. Thaler doesn't allow something like a tight reinsurance catastrophe market get in the way of placing a program for a major buyer that needs a significant amount of additional coverage within a certain budget.

The 55-year-old Thaler, who has been a reinsurance intermediary since graduating from Harvard 33 years ago, is "a very diligent and tenacious can-do broker who goes above and beyond most reinsurance brokers," the client said.

The client noted that his company last year completed an acquisition that introduced much more complexity into its reinsurance program. Already a large buyer of catastrophe coverage, the insurer needed twice as much capacity after the acquisition.

There were constraints, however, on the negotiations for its new reinsurance program. The insurer had a firm budget and it demanded that its reinsurers meet specified financial security standards. In addition, the acquired company had an established reinsurance program. So the new program had to efficiently combine the participants and the coverage in the client's and acquired company's expiring programs in a coordinated fashion that made all of the players in the transaction feel like a valuable piece of the deal, the client explained.

That was against a backdrop of a tight catastrophe reinsurance market and the typical skittishness of reinsurers when cedents modify their business strategy, the client said. Even so, the Thaler team executed a strategy by the April 1 renewal date, and within the budget.