Ep310 Dan Burrows Group CEO Pelagos: Very few people get to see the whole market

Today’s guest has a job that is almost unique in the global insurance industry. That’s because his organisation has been formed through a unique exercise that split a standard insurance company into an MGA in charge of underwriting and a balance sheet in charge of allocating capital to risk. All this means that Dan Burrows, Group CEO Pelagos Insurance Capital, is probably the only pure capital allocator in existence. There are lots of investors in the global insurance market, allocating capital to insurance companies, but they are many steps removed from the risk and are only likely to review their allocations annually. What’s unique about Pelagos is that it is much closer to the underwriting process, reviewing risk and capital decisions in almost real time. To paraphrase economic terms, whereas most investors in insurance are macro, Pelagos is very much micro. It takes some unique qualities to pull this kind of thing off and that’s what makes this podcast so fascinating. Dan is a unique character in a unique job with a unique perspective on the market and I’m sure that some of what you’re about to hear will surprise you. In this podcast we examine the re-brand to Pelagos, the maturing of the long-term relationship with the Fidelis Partnership and diversification into other underwriting channels, the prospects for profitable trading as the market becomes more competitive, thoughts around carrier M&A, as well as the big questions such as the best applications of AI in insurance and the seemingly relentless advance of portfolio solutions underwriting. Dan is calm, softly-spoken and thoughtful, but is also razor-sharp and able to provide instant feedback or pushback. In short he strikes me as the ideal foil for smart, entrepreneurial underwriting teams. This is an engrossing and revealing encounter which I can I highly recommend to anyone.

NOTES: Dan was too polite to correct my initial mispronunciation of Pelagos. The stress is on the first syllable, not the second. LINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo, now part of Sapiens: https://www.advantagego.com