Interview: Rupert Swallow
“We have been transacting business since June 2014—just over a year— and in that period of time, I like to think that we’ve gained incredible London and Bermuda, we’ve generated $25 million-plus sales in revenue seven months of 2014.
“We have done a fantastic job in those six business units in terms
of persuading our customers to come and join us at Capsicum Re and build out the business. We’ve been particularly successful on the motor side, where we have achieved a 70 percent market share for UK motor reinsurance, which for a start-up business is a fantastic testament to the team that we have hired and the customers who believe in what we are doing here,” Swallow says.
OF MICE AND MEN Where is the company now in terms of where Swallow and Chilton planned to be at this stage in its life?
“The best laid plans of mice and men, as they say. When you think
that we started with a blank piece of paper, the plan has been somewhat iterative. We had a good idea of the handful of producers we wanted to hire and I would say that we have been 100 percent successful in hiring them,” Swallow says.
“We’ve built a fantastic foundation of capability and of customers,
on which we can now start to build. It hasn’t gone perfectly to plan— nothing ever does. We attempted to land other teams opportunistically and that’s not always successful. The DNA of the type of people who work at Capsicum Re is quite specific—they need to have the confidence and loyalty of their customers, and they also need to be entrepreneurs.
“That’s not a DNA or a set of circumstances that exists in every person that the market would consider to be a producer.
“We’ve got six business units underway and I’m working on a handful of other opportunities that I’m anticipating will come to fruition before the end of the year. I suppose if you were to ask me to describe the business plan pithily then the plan that Chily and I formed back in December 2013 was to build out a thriving, successful reinsurance broker for our customers
“Our mission is to continue to build out that capability, to continue to
build the platform on which the producers and customer services can transact and continue to deliver on the plans that we’ve put forward plan,” he says.
As Capsicum Re is still in start-up mode Swallow says that it has not been
as affected by the state of the market at the moment as other companies. “We’re not so affected by the market environment, because we’re starting
from a very low base. We started from nothing, so every piece of business is a win, is a step forwards for us,” says Swallow.
14 | INTELLIGENT INSURER | November 2015 “Whether the market rate for that bit of business has been affected by
overall market conditions is not actually relevant to us—it’s very relevant to our customers and of course our job is to advocate on behalf of our customers in the best way that we can and achieve the best terms and conditions for them.
“At this stage in our development I’m not sure that we are as affected as the more traditional players and our competitors by the market conditions. We are aggressively seeking to win new customers, so that puts us in a very strong position. We’re very prospective—we’re looking forwards the whole time at what we can do for our customers, rather than looking backwards at what may happen to us.”
ATTRACTING CLIENTS What Capsicum Re is saying to attract these new customers is quite clear, according to Swallow. He believes such an approach leads to an understanding of their needs and better customer service as a result.
“We spend a lot of time with our customers, understanding them. At Capsicum Re we believe that the advocacy of our customers as a business is at the core of what we do. In terms of how they’re seeking to manage
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