2015 Bermuda:Re/insurance+ILS 53


of several assessment tests at the career counselling centre; these unequivocally pointed me to the school of business. Once there, I took an Introduction to Insurance course.


Our instructor, Dr Jim Carson, had about 10 years of industry experience to draw upon which made the topic extremely relevant, interesting and even fun! We had a series of guest speakers over the course of the class that were representative of various career paths in the industry: risk management, brokerage, underwriting and reinsurance.


Listening to them made me realise how broad the insurance world was; I thought surely I could find something in it that worked for me.


Shannon Totten


Job: Excess casualty practice leader Company: Endurance Insurance, Bermuda Career path


2013—Excess casualty practice leader, Endurance Insurance, Bermuda


2009—Senior vice president, industry practice leader for energy, utilities and transportation, Endurance Insurance, Bermuda


2008—Vice president, industry practice leader for energy, utilities and transportation, Endurance Insurance, Bermuda 2003—Vice president, excess casualty, Endurance Insurance, Bermuda


2001—Vice president, excess casualty, Starr Excess Liability Insurance


1997—Umbrella/excess underwriter, American Home Assurance Company (AIG) 1995—Account executive, Sedgwick Global


Shannon Totten is the Bermuda excess casualty practice leader for Endurance Insurance. With over 20 years of experience, she currently manages a team of underwriters focused on Fortune 1000 complex casualty risk profiles. Prior to joining Endurance in 2003, she worked for AIG as an excess casualty underwriter in Bermuda as well as New York. She started her career as a casualty broker in New York with Sedgwick.


Totten is a graduate of the University of Georgia’s risk management and insurance programme. Her volunteer roles include past president and education chair of the Bermuda Chapter of CPCU as well as leadership committee member of the international interest group of CPCU. She is the current vice chairman of the Bermuda Insurance Institute where she served as an instructor for CPCU courses for more than 10 years.


Why did you choose to work in this industry initially? I proactively and systematically chose it in college. I took advantage


What has been the highlight of your career so far? Living and working on the beautiful island of Bermuda. This small island in the Atlantic is a major hub for the re/insurance sector. I enjoy being surrounded by an impressive number of experienced professionals with a great deal of intellectual capital that they are willing to share. It’s been a fantastic quality of life for our family, personally as well as professionally. I often say that Bermuda is just a small town with big business. I guess I am more of a small town person at heart!


What has been the biggest challenge you have encountered?


Actually, I think I am in the midst of it currently. The underwriting tools historically and currently used in my space of complex casualty are backward-looking, inefficient and don’t make sense. It’s an area where the past is at times the worst indicator of the future because the real exposure today is always the ‘something else’ we haven’t thought about.


The backdrop to the story is that the re/insurance sector presumes


a linear path of change while the technology world presumes an exponential one. I believe the intersection of these two perspectives is going to be hugely interesting and will invariably result in a fundamental shift in how we approach casualty cat risks.


If you had chosen a different profession/career path, what would it have been?


Perhaps a veterinarian. I have always enjoyed science and medicine but my risk management internship at a hospital taught me that it wasn’t the place I wanted to be long-term. ■


“I enjoy being surrounded by an impressive number of experienced professionals with a great deal of intellectual capital that they are willing to share.”


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