Ep307 Alistair Lester, CEO Private Equity & M&A EMEA, Gallagher: Industrialising M&A Insurance

Today’s podcast is a masterclass with an expert in a class of business that has exploded with growth over the past decade. M&A insurance is a broad church that holds a large number of products that are all related to inter-company transactions. Representations and Warranties, potential tax liabilities, litigation risk and other contingencies related to M&A are the subject of this incredibly innovative segment of insurance. Three decades ago Alistair Lester was in on the ground floor as the class of business developed out of the D&O market. Today this is a class that is producing $10-12bn in annual revenue and can put out very meaningful maximum limits of around $1.5bn dollars for any one deal. But it’s a class that most of us won’t be familiar with, or perhaps one that some of us might think we won’t be suited to because we imagine it’s full of people who first trained as lawyers and then got into insurance. Now Gallagher’s CEO of Private Equity and M&A for Europe the Middle East and Africa, Alistair is proof that this is a class where traditional insurance brokers can thrive. This is one of the most energetic and fun conversations I have had on the show for some time. Alistair’s passion and enthusiasm are contagious and through the course of this interview I learned an awful lot about this exciting class and its enormous commercial potential. We all know insurance is often a grudge purchase and always marked down as a cost, but here it can be an investment that immediately pays for itself many times over. That’s incredibly rare and perhaps explains why this class has so much opportunity and is giving Cyber and renewables a run for their money for the title of highest-growth segment of the global insurance market. Time with Alistair makes it clear that despite growing tenfold over the past decade, this maturing class has a huge amount of growth left in it. So listen on. If after 45 minutes you’re not as enthusiastic as Alistair or I, I’d be enormously surprised.

LINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo, now part of Sapiens: https://www.advantagego.com