ADAM CROSHER: Yeah. It's a timely question. Obviously, in a marketplace where we're regularly getting quite serious reductions on premiums, insurers are looking at their books shrinking, and they're having to write more business just to stand still.
So, naturally, we're seeing some people doing some things that we wouldn't expect, or that they wouldn't have done two years ago. People dropping down from high excess positions who now want to look at primary layers, first excess layers, which again, is driving even more competition down on those layers where the most premium exists.
We're also seeing some shifts in appetite in terms of what territories people will look at. We've been contacted by a number of insurers who want to know about our book in the Middle East, for example. Maybe that's not somewhere that they were that keen on two years ago, but now it's a potential growth area for them. You need to look outside of your traditional space for doing business if you want to grow.
LEIGHTON GALVIN: Brilliant. I think that leads me nicely onto how local markets are interacting with clients and how that's impacting the London business and the business that's coming into London.
ADAM CROSHER: Yeah, that's a really good question, because it's something that we are not fighting against, but we're having to work with, because we're finding that local insurers are becoming more aggressive. They want to retain more capacity locally. And of course, that puts pressure on how much business comes to London.
Now, there's still a big difference between lines of business. For example, [? FIDNO, ?] there's a lot of local capacity in Latin America or the Middle East. Unless they're buying a program above $50 million, maybe $100 million, they're largely able to place that themselves. And we're not even getting a look at those programs.
I think where we still lead the market is, on crime, for example. On a primary basis, a lot of those quotes are still coming from London. But we need to as a market, look at ways of keeping London relevant, to innovate, to make ourselves attractive.
Why would someone in Latin America want to come to London? Well, we need to give them that. And perhaps one of those ways is innovation on product. That's somewhere where the London market has traditionally been very, very strong. We're constantly pushing boundaries on coverage.
And I know that in the FI team, we're working on cyber crime, combining cyber and crime into one policy, which is something that clients have told us for years that that's their preference. They don't want this element of cover here, that element of cover there. They just want to know, is my claim covered?
And I think we need to work collectively. It's not on the brokers or the insurers. It's on all of us as a market to try and keep ourselves as relevant as we can.
LEIGHTON GALVIN: That sounds like a really exciting initiative. I wanted to then ask you about, it leads quite nicely onto H2. We're there, or thereabouts. And then 2025. What are the growth plans? What have you got that could excite you, the likes of you, exciting stuff? And we just need to know what's going on and let our let our insurers know.
ADAM CROSHER: Yeah. So, for us in the international FI team, we already work on a really broad number of territories. So, we we're placing policies in Australia to Mongolia, to Kazakhstan and everywhere in between.
So, the question is always, is there somewhere that we don't have a footprint at the moment, that is really a good opportunity for us? And one place that stands out, something that we're exploring actively already, is Africa, which is obviously a very broad area. But there's huge opportunity there.
And we don't really do any business coming out of Africa. So, it's a big focus for us. We're working with our colleagues on the ground just trying to give them the ammunition to go in and speak to clients.
India is another one. Traditionally, the London market hasn't written much Indian FI business, but we're trying to work in a different way with our new colleagues in India to come up with a proposition that can work for London and can work for the clients locally, as well.
Because I think traditionally, the way they've bought insurance hasn't necessarily fitted very well with the way London likes to work. Very low deductibles, for example. Ends up being a bit of a money swap exercise. But we're trying to put something else forward that might be more compelling on both sides of the fence.
So, India and Africa in theory, couldn't be two bigger opportunities. But it takes a while to get going. But we look forward to bringing some of those exciting risks to our friends at the insurance companies.
LEIGHTON GALVIN: It'll keep you busy, won't it?
ADAM CROSHER: Absolutely
LEIGHTON GALVIN: I'm really excited to see how that develops, and I'll keep my ear to the ground on that. Keep me posted.
ADAM CROSHER: Will do.
LEIGHTON GALVIN: But that's all I have for you today. So, thanks for coming along. And thank you for tuning in for another episode of 5 Minutes with FINMAR. We hope you watch again soon.
