Rising stars


where I could use some of those skills. I had also built up some student debt, so the salary potential was also a factor. After I graduated I managed to get two opportunities, one at a pension fund and a more interesting one in cat modelling at Endurance. I didn’t know anything about earthquakes or hurricanes at the time, but I thought the team was great and I liked the challenge.


Name: Tom Gray


Company: TigerRisk Partners Job:


Reinsurance broker, property catastrophe and retrocession


Timeline: 2015: Reinsurance broker, property catastrophe and retrocession, TigerRisk Partners


2008: Reinsurance underwriter, Advent Capital


2006: Senior risk analyst, catastrophe modelling, Endurance


Describe your career so far and current role. I joined TigerRisk in 2015 as a reinsurance broker specialising in property catastrophe and retrocession business. I work with a diverse group of clients including US insurers, Lloyd’s Syndicates and MGAs. Prior to joining TigerRisk I spent six years in Lloyd’s as a reinsurance underwriter for Advent, where I ultimately managed the North America portfolio. I wrote a number of classes of business including property catastrophe, property per risk, retrocession and agriculture stop loss. I began my career at Endurance where I provided analytics for the


property treaty and property D&F accounts. I have experience in the use of commercial cat models to analyse client exposures. I graduated from Imperial College London in 2006 with a BSc (Hons) in mathematics. I hold the ACII and CCRA designations and I am a Member of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment.


Why did you choose the re/insurance industry? I didn’t start thinking about the industry I wanted to work in until I was at university. I was studying maths and I wanted to find a job


26 | INTELLIGENT INSURER | May 2015


Do you think the industry is attractive to young professionals? No. When I speak to young people who are interested in a career in finance, more often than not they are applying to accountancy firms or investment banks. It’s a shame because I think the industry has a lot to offer and there are some great graduate schemes like at Swiss Re and Lloyd’s. I think it is because people outside of the industry are not aware of


its size. It’s common knowledge that you can insure a house or a car, but most people don’t know that you can insure a power station or a race horse or another insurance company.


Do you think the re/insurance industry offers good opportunities and career development to young professionals? There are a lot of different jobs in the reinsurance market so there are many directions where young professionals can take their career. There are people with very technical jobs, like building risk models, and people who are more sales-focused, working in business development. The challenge is that these career paths are often poorly defined, so you have to be adaptable and show initiative. I work in catastrophe reinsurance and retro where the recent growth


in the ILS market is great news for young people. It has opened a new set of career paths leading into fund management.


What are your aspirations for the future? Now is an interesting time to be working in reinsurance. There’s a lot of innovation in products and analytics and there are some sophisticated buyers and sellers. I hope to work on either a very large transaction or a new product, which works out well for the client. In the longer term I’d like to get closer to the investors in the industry,


perhaps through raising capital for a new company or an acquisition. We often talk about matching risk with the most efficient capital and this is only possible if you understand the objectives of the investors. I would also like to be involved in bringing new risk into the market.


There is a lot of natural peril risk to public balance sheets around the world and I think that finding a private market solution would be a great result for all parties.


If you had chosen a different profession/career path, what would it have been? I’d probably have worked in a different financial market. At one time I wanted be an equities trader after I saw footage from the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange and liked the intensity. We might say ‘rate on line’ and they might say ‘yield’ but both are about understanding risk and return.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48