5 best books on insurance/insurtech to read during lockdown

Knocking out books on the insurance industry during the Covid-19 lockdown might not be everyone's cup of tea! - but these would be at the top of my list if you want to gain some nuggets of insight and broader wisdom into our wonderful industry.

If you have any other suggestions for insurance books to read - please comment on the post in LinkedIn.

1.Risk & Reward: An Inside View of the Property/Casualty Insurance Business by Stephen Catlin

Almost all of you that work in the P&C insurance industry will know the eponymous Catlin name. Catlin Underwriting Agencies was founded back in the 1980s in Lloyd’s of London by Stephen Catlin.

Catlin took his Lloyd’s syndicate (which consisted of him + one assistant + ￡25k in mortgage debt secured against his house as the startup capital) and over a 30-year period, transformed it into a global public company writing $4.4bn of premium and employing over 2,500 people in 55 offices around the world. In 2015, the Catlin Group was sold to XL in a $4.1bn deal.

Part-autobiography & part-educational about the workings of the specialty re/insurance industry, Catlin shares his roller coaster ride of a career building the Catlin Group. (Note this was written and released a couple of years before he launched his latest venture, the Convex Group).

Personal favourite moments from the book include:

• His travelling roadshow meeting investors to enable his syndicate to be the first Lloyd’s business to move away from traditional ‘names’ (individuals providing unlimited liability) as capital, and raise institutional private equity capital to help grow his business (a pioneering move at the time);
• Catlin’s detailed recollection of working in the company’s newly opened Houston office in the US just as the 9/11 tragedy took place, and how the business had to cope with the aftermath;
• Catlin’s views on what the P&C re/insurance industry must do to remain relevant in the years to come is also worth the time to read;

I always enjoy reading this engaging book. If I had only one (minor) criticism was that at only around 250 pages long, it leaves you wanting a bit more detail. But certainly worth a read.

2. The InsurTech Book by Sabine VanderLinden, Shan M. Millie, Nicole Anderson and Susanne Chishti

I wish there were more books on insurtech like this one.

Thought-provoking and excellent at bringing together thinking around exploring new business models, understanding and disrupting the insurance value chain, customer engagement strategies and how to organise your corporate structure to take advantage of opportunities.

Insurance is a sector seen as lagging when it comes to embracing technology to innovate. This book helps readers to think about how new emerging technologies (e.g. AI/ML, blockchain etc) can help transform and in some places completely disrupt the current insurance model, and it provides an easy-to-follow and well thought through playbook for how to do so.

A modern up-to-date take on how to take technology and innovate by using it to improve your insurance business.

3. The Insurance Management Playbook – A Leader’s Guide by Maroun Maroud

One word. Hilarious.

Maroun Maroud does a wonderful job of bringing his experiences working in and running various insurance businesses around the world (Gen Re, AIG, Arch and Zurich) to life in an entertaining way. The book is broken down into chapters covering each of the main functions which make up a typical insurance company. For example, chapter titles include:

• Claims: Your Front Office
• Sales: Everybody's Business
• Distribution: A Love-Hate Relationship
• Underwriting: The Inefficient Factory

Plus a number more covering entertaining clients (the author has done A LOT of work drinking - with hilarious recollections), the budgeting process, your HR department and how to deal with your IT function!

Small disclosure. I met Maroun in London over lunch a few years back (he’s based in New York and was over here travelling on business). He really is as interesting and engaging a character in real life as he portrays in his book.

An excellent book for those wanting to get a great overview of how an insurance company actually works - I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, full of good humour and anecdotes and has been thought provoking in places. I've passed my copy onto a few colleagues at work to read (I work in the London insurance market).

4. The AIG Story by Lawrence Cunningham

Fascinating and gripping read about how AIG's legendary CEO of forty years, Maurice R. ‘Hank’ Greenberg, and corporate governance expert, Lawrence Cunningham, relate the complete, inside story of the rise and near-destruction of AIG.

From the early days of Cornelius Van Der Starr (of CV Starr fame) making trips to China and the Far East to grow his risk management business, to then hiring on a young visionary in Greenberg who via his connections, skills, tenacity and entrepreneurial flair would grow a number of disparate insurance businesses around the world and bring them together into what would become AIG.

The book gives a detailed account of the 2008 global financial crisis and AIG's part in it. The AIG Story reveals much about those events which, until now, has been kept hidden from the public.

5. On the Brink – How a Crisis transformed Lloyd’s of London by Andrew Duguid

Huge losses very nearly destroyed Lloyd's, a revered British institution, the world's largest insurance market. Ten thousand people faced big personal bills they thought profoundly unfair. They challenged a complacent institution, forcing it to confront its biggest ever crisis. This book tells what really happened, from the inside.

A stunningly well-researched and detailed account of how the many thousands of Lloyd's 'names' (those investors who put up capital to support underwriting on an unlimited liability basis) were brought to ruin & bankruptcy following a period of greed, overoptimism and short-sightedness to the asbestos liabilities which lurked and would soon rear its ugly head.

The book gives an insightful account of how small group of Lloyd's insiders overcame what many at the time thought were impossible odds to put in place the programme of structural and cultural reform which laid the foundations for the modern day globally important marketplace, and restore the trust in the infamous Lloyd's brand around the world.

Disclaimer: The views in this article are my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer or other contacts.