Twenty-nine years between the claim and the capital plan

Mandate

Decide with the executive team where Ostervale can write sustainably after repeated storm seasons, and how it funds the volatility it keeps.

Outcomes

• Led the county-level Colorado homeowners withdrawal, removing US$29 million of concentrated hail exposure
• Co-designed the 2023 retention change and the three-year reinsurance strategy the board now approves
• Recommended the US$60 million surplus note that helped restore surplus to US$430 million by December 2025
• Completed the agency appointment review, moving from 1,280 to 1,050 agencies

Decisions in context

The role was created when our chief executive decided that portfolio, reinsurance and capital questions needed one person to connect them before they reached the board. I took it in April 2021, two years before the most difficult season in the company's recent history. My team covers strategic planning, catastrophe analytics, state economics and distribution strategy. I do not set rates, approve claims or sign reinsurance contracts; actuarial, claims and finance colleagues hold those authorities. What I own is the framing of each decision: the options, the evidence behind them and the cost carried by members, agents or surplus. Each case described elsewhere on this site belongs to these years, including the ones where my recommendation proved costly. I present to the full board several times a year and to the finance and risk committee at every meeting, but I have never been a director of Ostervale.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking a first independent directorship compatible with this role.

Mandate

Build an in-house view of storm exposure so that Ostervale no longer relied only on its intermediary's modelling.

Outcomes

• Introduced roof-age capture at new business and renewal, raising known roof ages from 38 to 81 per cent of homeowners policies
• Presented the first state-by-state economic review to the board in 2018
• Licensed and ran two vendor catastrophe models internally to compare their views of hail

Decisions in context

I arrived from the adviser's side of the reinsurance table and had to learn the carrier's side quickly. Ostervale had good underwriters and loyal agents but little reliable information about its roofs. My first project was mundane and decisive: asking agents to record roof age and material on every new policy and renewal, and funding inspections where they could not. Within four years we knew the roof age for most homeowners policies, which changed both our pricing discussions and our models. I also built the first review of each state's economics. It showed that Colorado homeowners and part of Oklahoma consumed far more capital than their premium suggested. Because I had advised Ostervale while at Wrexholm, I declared that history whenever my former firm was involved, and the chief financial officer led those particular conversations without me.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief strategy officer when the role was created in April 2021.

Mandate

Lead the analytical advice behind catastrophe programmes for regional and mutual property carriers.

Outcomes

• Introduced frequency-loss analysis for clients hurt by storms below their retention
• Supported about sixty client renewals
• Built a session on model uncertainty later presented to eleven client boards

Decisions in context

Leading the regional analytics team changed my audience from underwriters to boards. A small mutual's directors would ask what a one-in-200-year loss meant, and the honest answer involved more uncertainty than our standard reports showed. I built a short session explaining how two models could disagree by a third on the same portfolio and why both could still be useful. I also pressed clients to look at frequency losses: the run of thirty-million-dollar storms that never reached a catastrophe retention yet consumed a year's margin. Some clients wanted a programme recommendation and little else. The more thoughtful ones wanted to understand what they were keeping. The account executives owned the client relationships and negotiated with reinsurers; my team supplied the analysis and appeared in board meetings when a client asked us to explain it.

Reason for the move

Joined Ostervale, then a client, to carry the result of strategic decisions directly.

Mandate

Turn clients' policy data into reliable model inputs and explain the results to account teams.

Outcomes

• Cleaned and coded exposure data for more than thirty client submissions a year
• Developed a standard note on data gaps, especially missing roof and construction details
• Promoted to analytics manager in 2008

Decisions in context

Most of my early work at Wrexholm was data repair. A client would send a spreadsheet of locations with missing construction types, approximate addresses and no roof information, and the model would still produce a confident number. I learnt to write down every assumption we made to fill those gaps and to show account executives how much the answer moved when an assumption changed. That note became a standard part of our submissions. It was not popular at first, because it made some portfolios look less attractive to reinsurers. Over time it helped clients whose data was genuinely better to argue for fairer terms. I also began attending client meetings, initially to answer technical questions and later to present results. The experience gave me a lasting suspicion of any precise figure built on guessed inputs.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead the regional carrier analytics team.

Mandate

Prepare rate indications and supporting exhibits for homeowners filings.

Outcomes

• Prepared indications supporting eleven homeowners filings
• Added a wind and hail loss-load review to the annual pricing cycle
• Completed a part-time master's degree in applied statistics

Decisions in context

Pricing showed me the mechanics behind a rate. I prepared indications from loss history, trend and expense assumptions, and the senior actuaries decided what to file. The work moved slowly in some states and quickly in others, and I saw how long a filed rate took to change the results. Loxworthy also taught me how a stock insurer's priorities were set. Our parent judged us each quarter against an expected return, and that discipline was useful, though it sometimes favoured short-term margin over a patient fix. The persistent problem was storm loss. A good year could make homeowners look adequately priced; a bad one overturned that view. I wanted to understand the risk behind those swings, which is why I moved into catastrophe modelling a few weeks after finishing my part-time degree in Omaha.

Reason for the move

Moved into catastrophe modelling to work on the storm risk that pricing could not fully absorb.

Mandate

Inspect and document residential and farm property claims for carrier clients, especially after hail and wind events.

Outcomes

• Handled about 1,400 claims across three storm seasons
• Led three-person deployment teams during the 1999 tornado season
• Wrote a roof-inspection checklist adopted by the Wichita branch

Decisions in context

Adjusting gave me a ground-level view that I have relied on ever since. I inspected roofs, barns and outbuildings, measured damage and wrote recommendations that carrier examiners approved or changed. After large storms we worked long days with a backlog that grew faster than we could clear it. I learnt to explain a deductible patiently, to separate wear from storm damage carefully and never to suggest an outcome that was not mine to decide. By my third season I was leading small deployment teams and training newer adjusters on the checklist I had written. The work also raised questions I could not answer from a roof: why similar houses paid similar premiums despite very different risks, and how an insurer decided what to charge. Those questions, more than any career plan, took me into pricing.

Reason for the move

Joined an insurer's pricing team to understand the policies behind the claims.