Ironshore itself was formed in January 2007 following a $1 billion private
placement of equity securities in response to the hard market following large catastrophe losses borne by the industry. From a Bermuda-based insurance vehicle, it initially targeted catastrophe-prone coastal states in the US.
Its founders were John Clements and Robert Clements, who had
previously been involved in the post-catastrophe formation of some other well-known insurers including Ace, XL Capital, Mid Ocean and Arch Capital Group. Its first chief executive was industry veteran Robert Deutsch.
Ironshore grew quickly within its restrictive initial property-catastrophe mandate and was a big beneficiary of AIG’s problems. But its long-term plans were more expansive and, in December 2008, it lured Kelley from AIG, offering him the chance to, once again, build a global business almost from scratch.
He did not hang about. The company grew by 100 percent in 2009—although this was partly due to its acquisition of its Lloyd’s Pembroke Syndicate 4000—and by another 40 percent in 2010. He took the company from gross written premiums of $385 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2010. It cedes about 30 percent of its premium to reinsurance partners. The company’s headcount has matched this growth, going from 170 in 2008 to 450 now.
Much of this growth was due to geographical expansion that saw it
open offices in many US states and diversification in terms of the types of business and product lines it offered. “We have driven at a rapid clip,” admits Kelley. “But that has also meant a lot of opportunities for people, and I believe we have done it in the right way.”
Its growth was helped, not hindered, by the start of the global economic
downturn and the high-profile collapses of several banks and companies. As a result, cedants sought greater diversity in their counterparty exposures and this meant more doors opened for Ironshore’s rapidly growing team of executives—something Kelley sees as critical to the long-term success of the business.
“I noticed that many clients became much more conscious of their counterparty risk exposures than before the economic crisis. That meant they were more willing to speak to us,” Kelley says. “They wanted to diversify and that opened up great opportunities. In turn, we added new strings to our business, including several lines of business in the casualty area. It is not easy to grow in these challenging times, but a combination of those two things meant we have achieved remarkable growth.”
To put the company’s diversification into context, when Kelley took the
reins, some 75 percent of its business was property-catastrophe related. For the whole of 2011, he predicts that figure will be closer to 25 percent.
Kelley sets great store by client contacts—or, more precisely, the number
of potential clients his executives get in front of and the number of submissions they receive as a result. He sees this as important because, his logic goes, the more business you see, the more selective you can be about
Summer 2011 | INTELLIGENT INSURER | 29
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