The Convening Power of Lloyd’s

Arch Insurance International Pursuing Better Together Podcast: Dawn Miller

Arch Insurance International

Hello and thanks for joining us for another of the Arch Insurance International Pursuing Better Together podcasts. Today I’m joined by Dawn Miller, Commercial Director of Lloyd’s. Dawn has over 20 years of global insurance market experience working across underwriting, distribution, clients and strategy and has held several leadership positions at companies including AXA, AIG, Willis and Chubb. She joined Lloyd’s in May 2022 and oversees the Lloyd’s global network, which spans the Americas, EMEA and APAC and is responsible for market development, global engagement with brokers and new entrants. Dawn is also responsible for innovation at Lloyd’s including the Lloyd’s Lab, an aspect of her role which we’ll be delving into in more detail today. Dawn, first of all, thank you very much for joining us.

Dawn Miller

Thanks, Nigel. I appreciate it.

Arch Insurance International

You have an incredibly expansive role. Could you just give me a bit of a summary of what the role entails? And also, just touching on that point there, transitioning to working in the Lloyds environment, how has that been for you?

Dawn Miller

When you think about my role, I like to think about it as everything at the front of house for us. So, coming into the Lloyd’s marketplace, ensuring that we’re as transparent and as uncomplicated as we possibly can be coming in, particularly as a new entrant to our marketplace. A big part of my role is ensuring that we are fit for purpose, so to speak, to attract additional underwriters into our marketplace, additional capital to our marketplace, and also, maybe even more importantly, ensure that the best underwriters in our space are tooled up and able to do their work as effectively as possible. And in order to do that, are we using, asking ourselves, our network to its fullest capability? We have the largest license network out there of any insurance entity, we have 25 offices around the world and ensuring that the individuals in those offices are taking care of those licenses and making sure that they are operating to their fullest capability for our current underwriters in the market, which then also but in and of itself is an attraction for new underwriters coming in and new capital.

Arch Insurance International

You’ve come in fresh to the Lloyd’s environment itself. How is it working within this very unique marketplace?

Dawn Miller

It’s very different. My whole background, I’ve been very very blessed to have a great career background in the company market, where you do feel a little bit more of a cause and effect. If you want to shift something on a P&L or look for a certain outcome or solve a certain problem, there’s somewhat of a direct line. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but certainly somewhat of a direct line to get that done. In here, you’re one step removed as a regulator. So always keeping in mind that the actions you’re taking are for making sure the marketplace itself continues to perform at the best capability possible, while at the same time getting to yes, to the extent possible with whatever the challenge is. So, the first few months, I have to admit were a bit hard. You just ask yourself, this is quite fascinating, as a 330-year-old institution that has grown up in layers, at each time responding to the marketplace and the different crises and opportunities around itself. So, to be here at a time where we’re experiencing positive marketplace movements around us, it’s a wonderful moment to say how can we ensure our platform is fit for purpose as we go forward?

Arch Insurance International

This is a really exciting time to be taking on this particular role. There is a lot of momentum within the marketplace. Would that be fair?

Dawn Miller

Absolutely. And really, that’s what really motivated me to come over to Lloyd’s. There’s always incredible opportunity to learn here and that’s always a motivator, I think when you’re thinking about new roles. But also, as a global marketplace as the centre, I truly believe a centre of innovation for our industry, I believe our marketplace can change the world and it is the one place where we can convene intellectual capital, financial capital, underwriting prowess in order to solve some of the complex customer challenges around us. And in particular, look at some of these vital protection gaps around the world, in at-risk communities in another ways. So it’s fascinating time, and it’s an honour to be part of it.

Arch Insurance International

Lloyds, just in that context, of course is known as very much an innovative hub. And one things that you’re heavily involved in is the activities of the Lloyd’s Lab itself, which is now celebrating its fifth anniversary. How much of an impact do you think the Lab has had on the market itself?

Dawn Miller

Absolutely. So yes, having the Lab within that front of house scope, I think was particularly important to me as I came into the role. I could be biased, I do have a stint as an entrepreneur myself early in my career, so I’m always very biased to support quick thinking, innovative thinking and being comfortable with trying and failing fast. And then what you learn from that and start over, and I think that’s so, so vital in a marketplace like ours, especially as I said, we’ve been around for a while, and to have that space, where those kinds of activities and that kind of thinking can happen. So again, as you said, we’re coming up on our five-year anniversary. It absolutely has been vital in my mind to bringing out technology centric ideas and innovations to our marketplace. And some of the innovations [the Lab] have come up with have not always been product related. They have been some services as well to improve our marketplace and how we function overall. Again, for those that are not familiar with the  Lloyd’s Lab, it’s two 10 week cohort programmes that engage throughout the year. We have some supplemental programmes that sit around the Lab, but 10 weeks again, it’s not a long sprint. But given that convening power of Lloyds, we’re able to bring the intermediary community, the underwriting community, the managing agent community, the capital community all together very swiftly around these ideas, whether the ideas start off as an answer to a specific call to action, a specific gap, something around climate, something around space, something around supply chain, or a potential service where there may be an option to bring it and put it to use in our marketplace, but someone’s not quite sure how. So, I think we make an impact by creating that awareness and to pulling in mentors. When we first got started, we had to beg and cajole our members in the marketplace, whether it was the end client, whether it was underwriters, whether it was managing agents, distribution partners, other service companies to be mentors. And now we have almost too many mentors for the number of cohort members that we have as well. So that alone tells me that we’re doing something right. If you think that there’s been 100 entities that have gone through the Lab in the last nine cohorts, we’re on cohort 10 now, 100 entities, they’ve raised over a billion dollars themselves when they’ve walked back out the door, created employment for hundreds of people. And we’ve definitely seen multiple examples, staying in our marketplace is full syndicates, special purpose arrangements, and certainly exercising delegated authority arrangements all over the world. So, I think we are making an impact. And our plan for the next evolution as we move forward through our next five years and beyond is really how to amplify that by bringing it to the partner ecosystem, additional financing, maybe going a bit of a tour around the world, we’ll see. But we’ll get to that.

Arch Insurance International

It sounds like the last five years has purely been a case of, of the Lloyd’s Lab really establishing itself and becoming a force for innovation within the market.

Dawn Miller

Absolutely. And evolving, evolving in the beginning. I’m so grateful for those the early teams that launched us and pushed through what they had to, to really just gain the space, if you will, in the moment in time and manage expectations along the way. So early cohorts, we weren’t very prescriptive about please bring us product ideas, or please come to us with a call for solutions around cyber accumulation, etc. Now, we can do that, as we’re a little bit more established. Because we’ve got a broader community to pull from, but also we have a track record.

Arch Insurance International

I’ve always been curious about within such a short time period, can you really create that level of collaboration, and I suppose in line with our theme today of Pursuing Better Together, that collaboration that could deliver something that’s truly market advancing. And clearly it has done that, but it’d be great to get your take on how you actually bring those parties together in such a short period of time to deliver something that is so market impactful.

Dawn Miller

Absolutely. You’re right and as we said earlier, 10 weeks is not at all a long period of time. Actually I feel like I when I get older, I feel like 10 weeks is shorter and shorter as we get older. But you’re right. But the time in our accelerator is not limited to that 10 weeks, right. So again, as we say, we have 200 applications that come in, we go through a process, you whittle down to 10 to 12 per cohort that comes in. That 10 weeks that they then spend with us, and in our community, it’s just the beginning. They have access to the Lab for the rest of their continuing on in the lifespan of their company. They have access to us, they have access to those mentorships and those relationships. So really, if I were to think about the Lab, you’ve got this intense time, this 10 week period of time where you can make as many relationships, an entity can make as many relationships and try as many ideas as they can within their product or their offering. And constantly test because we have built a formula, the Lab team has a formula, and a way of working between different industry volunteers and mentors. It’s really up to that entity that is participating in the cohort to maximise those relationships and make it their own. And they have those for the rest of their life. And now actually, as we move forward, we are working hard on bringing our alumni back home, and bringing that into an active pipeline and working that alumni community around the world as an additional attribute.

Arch Insurance International

You couldn’t really achieve that anywhere else perhaps could you, because of that market aspect of what is Lloyd’s really lends itself to this sort of collaborative drive?

Dawn Miller

Absolutely. I truly believe that the convening power that we have to bring, if you think about the 400 Lloyd’s brokers that are here and even more critically, the managing agent community, the 100 syndicates that we have, thousands and thousands of examples of successful coverholders around the world, all of that together and the end clients that are here and around the world, it is the opportunity for thousands of relationship points to happen as we go forward. Now, I’m also cognisant that this is an incredible community, but we are very much an insurance community. So another thing we’re looking at as we move forward is how do we bring in other types of partners into our ecosystem that might also benefit from some of our cohort members, something we’re sort of experimenting around. Are there some other ready made similar type setups, similar type accelerators, or other types of investment vehicles who, move along in their businesses as they do, but perhaps the power of all of us together could be even more exciting?

Arch Insurance International

Looking at the individual companies themselves within the market? Would you say that we’re seeing that drive to innovate at the individual company level, and also, just in that context, perhaps talking about how Lloyds is helping to foster greater market innovation at the individual company level?

Dawn Miller

Absolutely. Let’s put the Lab to the side for the moment. In addition to the Lab, we have three other programmes and one let’s call it procedural point that really allow us to o encourage additional innovation at a company level, at a managing agent, syndicate level. We have our Launchpad which is a community of leaders from around the marketplace, who come together to share ideas and quickly share with each other could this work? Maybe, maybe not. Let’s see if it has some legs. So again, that is just how do you foster that sense of innovation and also help people frame thoughts that seemed like great ideas, how do you carry them through an innovation process so that they land as something that can actually be realised. So that’s happening all the time and that is an underlying sort of side programme as well. We have Future Minds, which is really looking at a younger newer underwriting committee, newer to the industry, and bringing them together in a little bit of a Dragon’s Den style, if you will, to help them hone and develop their own entrepreneurial skills. It also gives them a chance for personal development and presentation, etc. So that’s a neat programme that we run. And also I mentioned a procedural point. So within Lloyd’s, we have what we call the ICX class code. So, if you think here, when a syndicate has a business plan, they’ll say, property class, liability class, terrorism, whatever those classes of business might be, for those that wouldn’t be familiar with that term. We also have something called the ICX class, which means that up to two percent of the planned premiums of that entity can be attributed to innovation. So, if you start doing the math on that, Nigel, when you think about the overall premium of the marketplace, 2%, that’s a lot out there. That’s a lot of potential scope for innovation premium. And again, that is a class that we’re all looking at. We’re aware of it here on the corporation, we designed it so people could experiment and try and try new things and not be held back by thinking, oh, it doesn’t exactly look like this class of business. Well, let’s put it in this space, let’s watch it and see how it goes and move out from there. It’s through ICX class code and other innovations. We have over 75% of our entities that have come through the cohorts are still operating in our marketplace today which is amazing and a 95% survival ratio overall, into the insurance market, whether they’re operating in our in the Lloyd’s marketplace or not.

Arch Insurance International

Given the evolving risk environment, the rapidly evolving risk environment that we’re seeing today, is there perhaps then more onus on the market to really step up to the plate? And look at, I suppose, expanding the boundaries of insurance?

Dawn Miller

Absolutely. I believe as a marketplace, we’re hopeful that Lloyd’s again becomes the catalyst for this happening, right. But we have to be attuned to global customer demands. There are enormous demands that are outside, creating protection gaps, which are a threat, I think, to everyone’s future wellbeing. And so I think making sure that we are able to listen to those customer demands, and not shy away when we say how do we deal with supply chain topics? How do we deal with carbon capture storage in the future? How do we deal with some of these flood issues that are around us, whether it is a small solution that allows many people to feel relief, or it’s something that shifts on a on a broader scale. So, listening to thse client demands and creating an environment for it is very, very important, and making sure that our marketplace, that insurance is at the table when some of these topics are being discussed. Often, only finance gets invited, and I think a big part that we are working on hard here at Lloyd’s is making sure that insurance is at the table as well.

Arch Insurance International

Creating a new product, bringing a new product to market, it’s a very finance, resource and talent intensive undertaking. Given where you sit within the Lloyds market, are you seeing the market appetite for the development of new products? And also, just in that context, how is Lloyd’s itself working to support product expansion?

Dawn Miller

So we are absolutely seeing, I wouldn’t say shift in appetite, the appetite is always there to create a new product and answer to new needs. But we are experiencing a current market trend and a moment in time that’s allowing everyone to instead of feel I think they are playing a little bit on the defense to be on the offensive and say yes, how can we take a step out and solve some of these challenges? And so, our role here at Lloyd’s and where we’re shifting when we think about the Lloyds Lab, and how do you advance that model forward from being a technology focused accelerator for our market into something bigger is to use our convening power to have a formula, if you will, for bringing minds together to solve these complex challenges. Ultimately, maybe the solution won’t look the same once deployed on everyone’s individual balance sheets but the convening power of Lloyd’s, I think we have nearly no equal in some ways depending on the environment, of course, but to bring that convening power together, to pull people together to say, what are the five questions that are holding us back from solving the topic of the day  Let’s talk about that. What solutions can we get to and how can we make some milestone successes along the way? So, I think that’s really a gift of our marketplace and I’m very honoured to be here and be part of that. And I can certainly see us moving forward with some of the things we’re looking at related to cyber and next, looking at ensuring that transition here. Bringing those groups together saying what is that formula for success going forward?

Arch Insurance International

Absolutely. And of course, a key driver of innovation is the breadth of talent that you have within the marketplace itself as well. And I wanted to just pitch a quick question there about how important the ability to attract specialist expertise to the market is and not just from the insurance community, but from a wider talent pool. How important is that?

Dawn Miller

This is the answer to our ability to innovate going forward. We all speak about this. We’ve got this wave of industry, retirement happening, we have changes around the world, we have the shape of insurance changing, therefore new skills are needed. I think it’s over 20,000 people we have to hire in the next three to five years. That’s an incredible number and that community needs to reflect the community that we are advocating and selling into, so to speak. And bringing in the diverse backgrounds and experiences is even more important. One of the things I think is interesting about insurance is to date we perhaps haven’t given ourselves as sexy if you will of a view, possibly when it comes to recruiting. We just don’t seem to be on the radar but I think if we’re going to find that 20,000, if we’re going to find the 20,000 that’s going to take us down the journey with new technology, new ways of thinking, new cultural needs, etc, then we have to look in more diverse spaces. And start the recruitment and start the advocacy with children that are in primary and secondary school and have them understand that insurance is not that classic kind of, ‘oh, it’s my auto insurance or my claim hasn’t been paid’, etc., the urban myths, if you will, that sometimes survive about our industry for any company. But really, that you can have a rich career in so many disciplines within our industry. Whether it’s mathematics, actuarial engineering, underwriting, legal, HR, talent, all of it, and it’s all encompassed and you get to see so much of the world around us.

Arch Insurance International

As you were saying, insurance has such a critical role in solving some of the biggest challenges that the world faces at the moment.

Dawn Miller

I’ve always thought about it as an oxygen, it’s an oxygen to make things move. If you’re going to protect yourself prior to an incident, recover from it and persist and prevail, all of it, you need some form of someone helping you share that risk to move forward, which when you think about when our industry came together with Lloyd’s market, or otherwise, it was entities coming together to share risks, so they can move forward and build resiliency going forward. That’s no different for our industry now today. But to get that talent in, they can see the world in a different place, can look at the risks around them in a different in a different way is vital. And in particular, there’s different skill sets coming in, when you see the influence of AI and data science on our industry now today.

Arch Insurance International

I just wanted to come back to something as well that you mentioned earlier Dawn, and that was the market’s Future Minds initiative. Can you just give us a bit more information on that programme?

Dawn Miller

So Future Minds is an innovation programme that gives us a bit of a framework to bring innovative underwriters, brokers and clients together to network and develop new solutions for the markets’ evolving needs, as we look forward, what have the customer demands been? How can we address them? We’re bringing them together in a very structured manner and then they benefit from the subject matter experts that are here in the marketplace, and the risk and insurance communities surrounding Lloyd’s as well to really test solutions, but they themselves are learning all the time as well. In the past, we’ve looked at intangible assets, human capital, geopolitics and energy transitions. So, you can see it has a bit of a thematic feel to it, right? it’s eight-week programme, it’s our fifth version of doing this, fifth edition we call it and we’re looking at supply chains. And they will work in teams, doing daily missions together, focusing and working with our customers of the marketplace as well. And then they’ll have some innovation coaches along the way, helping them test out and work through what they’re observing and forming. At the end of the sprint, there is a kind of Dragon’s Den type of environment where the ideas come back, again, it’s on supply chain, they’re evaluated and we pick the top four pitches based on desirability, feasibility and viability of the product. I love this programme because if you’re innovating at an earlier point in your career you’re going to do it your whole life

Arch Insurance International

Do you think that perhaps companies give enough share of voice to this newer generation to have their voice heard in these innovation topics and discussions?

Dawn Miller

I believe that companies, if you could say this, get up out of bed in the morning and they want to do this well, they want to be able to hear the fresh new thinking coming in from those entering the workplace now and we all want to be able to innovate. I do believe that it’s a big topic, I believe it can be scary. And sometimes when you’re working in an organisation that has very short term needs, as many of our publicly traded peers and partners in our marketplace with us do have, that innovation is hard to find, where do you put it, because sometimes you need to innovate and lose to win later. So, it’s a big topic. And I’m hopeful that what we’re doing here at Lloyd’s makes people more comfortable with it, it’s not so scary, and it can be done. And innovation doesn’t mean that you need to change everything all at one time, it’s small steps along the way. So, I think companies struggle with it because we all have a lot of rules and legacy regardless of if you’re 330 years old, or 10 years old. But it’s a topic if we’re all speaking and communicating together, we can move forward.

Arch Insurance International

Just looking further ahead. In your opinion, what more needs to happen to ensure that Lloyd’s can remain at the forefront of these  advancements in risk transfer that we’re seeing,

Dawn Miller

We’re very committed in making sure that our executive leadership group and the exco, and our leadership teams are very much connected to the marketplace and listening, really pushing those improved ways of engaging with the outside marketplace, into our goal structures. If I’m being very honest, we’ve been focused on ourselves for so long and really coming out into the marketplace and listening and by default that will drive innovation, and drive shifts and changes going forward. I think making people comfortable, that letting perfection get in the way of success is not an answer forward, we’re not going to solve protection gaps, we’re not going to remain relevant as an industry, much less as a marketplace, if we are striving for complete perfection in the beginning and trying to find every flaw in a topic before we move forward. So really challenging ourselves there. As a newcomer to Lloyd’s, I’ve seen from day one being here that everyone is trying and really pulls in that right direction. Everyone wakes up, as I said, and starts the day really wanting to make a difference. And I believe as a marketplace, we’ve earned that right to try new things and to shift and to be more innovative. How we approach our day-to-day business and how we approach some of these challenges around us and making sure that we’re listening.

Arch Insurance International

I have one final question which we put to all of our guests and it just comes back to our theme of Pursuing Better Together and I wanted to just ask you, what does Pursuing Better Together mean to you?

Dawn Miller

This is my favourite question. I was hoping you were asking this from other podcasts that I’d seen before. But I think it’s phenomenal actually because it really reflects and complements our purpose of sharing risks to create a braver world. It also aligns to our values here at Lloyd’s; we are stronger working together and we should be striving for better, whether it’s ways of working, better products, better relationships with our customers, with the outside marketplace, performing better, treating each other better, with more kindness and more grace, all of that combined will allow us to innovate and continue moving forward to make sure we’re as relevant as possible. Actually, another role that I’ve got, which I’m very proud of is I’m on the Advisory Committee for Maths for Girls, which is an offshoot programme of Founders for Schools. And it’s an incredible programme which exposes young women and young people in schools all over the country, to STEM learning and to maths at a very early age. And the reason why I like it so much is because if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. Therefore, if you’re not collaborating, and communicating and trying out new ideas, and being brave about that, but also treating each other with the kindness that comes with that, then we can’t innovate. And so that’s what gives me hope, though. It makes me super excited for our marketplace and what we’re all doing together.

Arch Insurance International

It’s so clear from our discussion, just how central your role is to this drive for innovation that we’re seeing at Lloyd’s and the wider insurance market. And of course, we’ll watch closely developments at Lloyd’s over the coming years and we’ll look forward to having opportunities to speak to you again, but at this point in our discussion, all that is left is for me to say a huge thank you from Arch for speaking to us today.

Dawn Miller

Absolutely, I appreciate it. Thank you again and until this time next year, we’ll see where we’re at.