Twenty-eight years from the reserving triangle to the management board

Mandate

Restore underwriting margin after a period of losses, concentrate the group on commercial lines and rebuild investor confidence in reported results.

Outcomes

• Undiscounted combined ratio improved from 101.4% in 2021 to 95.8% in 2025.
• Sold a €780m personal motor book for €265m, adding 14 points to the Solvency II ratio.
• Solvency II ratio rose from 158% at the end of 2021 to 192% at the end of 2025.
• Re-rated 41,000 small-business property policies for flood and introduced a prevention credit used by 6,300 businesses.
• Reduced binding-authority partners from 64 to 38, with the delegated loss ratio improving from 71% to 63%.

Decisions in context

The supervisory board appointed me chief executive in April 2021, three months before the July floods. My mandate was to return the group to sustainable underwriting profit and decide what kind of insurer it should be. I concluded that we were a commercial insurer carrying a personal motor book we could not run competitively, and I led the sale of that book in 2022. I reorganised the management board around four responsibilities: underwriting, finance, operations and risk. Much of my time goes on three subjects that I write about publicly: catastrophe pricing, the presentation of results under IFRS 17 and the terms of delegated authority. I also chair the supervisory board of our Austrian subsidiary. My present priorities are preparing for the amended Solvency II framework and extending flood prevention work to property owners and tenants together.

Reason for the move

Current appointment.

Mandate

Introduce consistent underwriting standards across five national commercial businesses and reduce volatility in property results.

Outcomes

• Commercial undiscounted combined ratio improved from 103.2% in 2016 to 97.9% in 2020.
• Introduced an underwriting authority framework linking limits to audited file quality.
• Built a quarterly accumulation review by postcode cluster for natural catastrophe exposure.
• Reduced the reinsurance programme's cost by €22m a year through better exposure data.

Decisions in context

Talvermark recruited me to bring its five national commercial businesses under one underwriting standard. Each country had its own authorities, referral rules and pricing tools, and the group could not reliably see its combined natural catastrophe exposure. I introduced a single authority framework in which an underwriter's limits depended on the results of file audits as well as their grade, which was unpopular with some senior colleagues and changed behaviour within a year. I built the quarterly accumulation review with the chief risk officer and took responsibility for reinsurance purchasing, where better exposure data allowed us to buy the same protection for less. As a management board member I shared collective responsibility for the group, including the personal motor business I would later recommend selling. The supervisory board's succession process led to my appointment as chief executive in 2021.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief executive by the supervisory board following the retirement of my predecessor.

Mandate

Return a loss-making commercial book to profit while keeping the broker relationships on which it depended.

Outcomes

• Commercial combined ratio improved from 106% in 2011 to 98% in 2015.
• Repriced the glasshouse horticulture segment in 2014 ahead of the June 2016 hailstorm.
• Reduced the number of broker agencies from 1,400 to 860 while retaining 92% of premium.

Decisions in context

Veldhoorn gave me my first profit-and-loss responsibility. The commercial book had lost money for three years, and the parent group's risk committee wanted a plan that did not depend on growth. I learnt Dutch in my first year and spent much of it with brokers, who explained why our prices had become hard to defend. We concentrated on fewer agencies with deeper relationships and rebuilt pricing for segments where our data was weakest, especially glasshouse horticulture, where hail exposure was concentrated in a small number of regions. When a severe hailstorm struck the southern Netherlands in June 2016, losses were heavy but within what we had priced for. I also learnt to present to a parent group's committees, explaining a subsidiary's decisions to people who saw the company as one line in a larger balance sheet. Talvermark approached me in 2016.

Reason for the move

Recruited to the Talvermark management board as group chief underwriting officer.

Mandate

Write and price natural catastrophe treaties for insurers in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries.

Outcomes

• Introduced a cedant data-quality score that adjusted treaty pricing for exposure information.
• Grew the regional catastrophe portfolio from €410m to €620m while holding modelled return on capital.
• Handled Windstorm Kyrill treaty claims for German cedants in 2007 as a treaty underwriter.

Decisions in context

I joined Carlsholm Re as a treaty underwriter and became head of the Central and Northern European natural catastrophe portfolio in 2009. The role meant pricing other insurers' exposure to windstorm, flood and hail, which taught me how differently primary insurers understood their own books. After Windstorm Kyrill in January 2007, cedants with good exposure data were settled quickly, while others spent months reconstructing what they had insured. That experience led me to propose a data-quality score that adjusted our treaty pricing for the quality of exposure data each cedant provided. The idea was contested by colleagues who feared losing clients, and some did leave, but the portfolio grew overall. By 2011 I wanted responsibility for underwriting a primary book directly, and Veldhoorn, which had been a client, offered me that. I disclosed the approach to my employer and withdrew from Veldhoorn's renewal before accepting.

Reason for the move

Sought direct profit-and-loss responsibility for a primary insurance business.

Mandate

Maintain and develop the commercial property tariff, including natural hazard loadings.

Outcomes

• Built a flood zoning model for the commercial tariff after the August 2002 Elbe flood.
• Secured adoption of hazard-based loadings for new business in 2004.
• Completed the actuarial qualification in 2002 while working full time.

Decisions in context

Feldrath gave me my first responsibility inside an insurer, maintaining the tariff for commercial property. I finished my actuarial qualification in 2002 by studying in the evenings. The Elbe flood in August 2002 changed my view of the work. Our claims showed that the tariff took almost no account of flood hazard, and I spent much of the following two years building a zoning model and arguing for its adoption. The board accepted hazard-based loadings for new business in 2004 but not the larger re-rating of existing customers that I had proposed. The sales director's objection, which I underestimated at the time, was that nobody had planned how to explain the increase to customers or to give them a way to reduce it. I left in 2006 because I wanted to understand catastrophe risk across many portfolios rather than one.

Reason for the move

Moved to reinsurance to work on natural catastrophe risk across many insurers' portfolios.

Mandate

Prepare claims reserve analyses and pricing studies for mid-sized non-life insurers.

Outcomes

• Completed reserve reviews for eleven client insurers.
• Built the firm's first standard template for reserve-range reporting.
• Began the actuarial qualification in 1999 with the firm's support.

Decisions in context

My first job after university was at a small actuarial consultancy in Cologne. I prepared reserve analyses for mid-sized property and casualty insurers, usually under a partner's supervision, and wrote parts of the reports that went to their management boards. I had no client authority, and my role was technical. It gave me an early understanding of how an insurer's past decisions show up in its reserves, and how often the people running a company had not looked closely at those patterns. I developed a standard way of reporting reserve ranges that the firm adopted for its smaller clients. The partners encouraged me to begin the actuarial qualification in 1999. After three and a half years I wanted to work where pricing decisions were taken rather than reviewed afterwards, and Feldrath offered me that.

Reason for the move

Wanted to work inside an insurer where pricing decisions were made rather than advised on.