Raymond Hannan, of Westfield Specialty, is the latest guest on Insurance Business TV. He looks at the growing complexity surrounding specialty insurance, the kind of partnerships and infrastructure investments carriers are prioritizing, and how to manage today's complex risks.
00:11 Insurance Business TV recently attended in Scottsdale the 25th annual TMPAA
00:09 annual summit. Whilst there, we caught up with leading insurance professionals to address some of the top challenges
00:17 the industry is facing today. Hello, I'm here with Raymond Hannan, EVP and chief of corporate underwriting at Westfield
00:26 Specialty. Raymond, we're here at the target market conference talking about a specialty insurance and now everything is getting more complex and more niche.
00:35 I wondered if you could talk about that in your organization.
00:38 Absolutely. Um, Target Markets has been a great uh conference for us so far. Uh,
00:44 it's a it's a place where we can really uh kind of meet with a lot of different programs all at once. Um,
00:51 I definitely agree that the the underwriting process is getting more and more niche and uh programs is a great opportunity for a carrier to kind of
00:58 take advantage of that expertise. You know, at Westfield Specialty, we uh use programs when uh there's an underwriting
01:06 expertise we don't have or a distribution source that we don't have or maybe even a technology that we don't have in house. And when we think about
01:13 that underwriting underwriting specialization, um that's definitely where that play comes in.
01:18 Right. Thank you. So I wondered if we could talk about um uh the insurance of partnerships and infrastructure investments are are carriers
01:25 prioritizing to support these leash programs particularly when it comes to data sharing, claims handling or compliance in unique verticals.
01:36 Yeah, that's a that's a big question. uh when it comes to the carrier side, it's really important that we can uh work
01:43 very effectively with that MGA partner who's then working with a broker to to produce that business to us. Um we use a pretty complex model when it comes to
01:52 evaluating um you know our program opportunities and one of those evaluations is the tech piece, the technology piece. So, uh, at Westfield
02:01 Specialty, we have a whole onboarding process and we bring our IT team in very early, uh, to assess our potential MGA
02:08 partners. Um, I do think, uh, our mission has been to try to just make it better. So, uh, better for the MGA,
02:17 better for us, better for the broker producing the business, and better for the insurers. Uh, so we're spending a lot of money currently on upgrading our
02:25 ability to connect directly through APIs and other technologies. And I think that um you know overall I I think what we're
02:33 going to see in five years is very different than the market looks today.
02:36 Right. Thank you. And as things are getting more complex arguably it is more of a need for broker industry of that people relationship of really
02:44 understanding complexity and the amo and how technology is helping that it's really just leveling the playing field of the complexity we're now seeing.
02:53 Yeah. Yeah, and hopefully we're becoming more efficient, right? Uh the the the whole process, you know, bringing AI into into the mix, we're seeing that
03:01 happen at the at the underwriting level through various MGA efforts. Uh you know, particularly on the triaging and submission process. Uh the ability to
03:09 take unstructured data and turn it into structured data really has been the game changer in the AI market.
03:15 Thank you, Raymond. Thank you for speaking with me. Thank you.
