HDI Global will be stepping up its presence in the United Kingdom and Ireland captive market in the coming months with a more targeted approach on new programmes.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Global Captive Podcast Oliver Davies, chief distribution officer for the industrial insurer in the UK and Ireland, said while they have been servicing captive fronting programmes in the region for the past decade, they are now planning a more targeted approach.
“We’ve been making a huge amount of investment into captives over the last 12 to 18 months here in the UK and Ireland and there’s further news to come on that,” he said.
“I would say that our focus has really been around existing clients, particularly in the large corporate sector, where we’ve been working with them on the sort of standard placement to their programmes, mainly around property and casualty.
“They’ve had a requirement to bring those into a captive environment over the last decade and we’ve serviced them extremely well.
“What we’re doing going forward is being far more targeted and making people far more aware around our proposition as a fronting insurer with a great international network that we do have here at HDI.”
Davies is currently recruiting for a Captive Services Team Leader and other captive roles.
He said HDI had also invested in a new operating model for its captive business and added more specialist understanding.
HDI already has a large presence in the continental European fronting market, while it has been growing its proposition in the United States over the past two years.
Davies said because HDI’s core target market is large corporates he is working closely with colleagues in Paris at the insurer’s Captive Centre of Excellence and at Hannover Re on alternative reinsurance solutions.
“We’ve worked very closely with our colleagues in the Paris office under the headline of HDI Enables and so they are providing, in conjunction with ourselves, a number of different options in relation to alternative risk transfer,” he added.
“If we need additional capacity, or we need additional insights for something a little bit quirky, then we can pull in the Hannover Re teams to support us on that.
“It’s really important for us to utilise the wider Talanx group, being the fifth biggest insurer in Europe; to be able to get in some of the expertise from various parts of the organisation makes a huge difference.”
Listen to the full podcast discussion with Oliver Davies and US colleague Jason Tyng here, or on any podcast platform. Just search for ‘Global Captive Podcast’.