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Most insurance facilities thrive in a soft market and quietly disappear when conditions harden. In this episode, host Georgie Simister is joined by Tom Squires, head of distribution and digital trading at AEGIS London, and Dan Prince, CEO of Augentic Underwriting, to explore why that cycle keeps repeating itself and whether it has to. The conversation covers the new AEGIS and Augentic partnership, how multiline digital consortia actually work in practice, and what it really takes to build a follow market proposition that brokers will still want to use when the hard market returns.
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What is Insurance Technology: Fact or Fiction??
Host Georgie Simister speaks with key insurance industry figures to separate fact from fiction in a world of insurance, debunk industry myths and explore the game-changing innovations shaping its future.
Get in touch to suggest our next guest: https://artificial.io/contact/
Is it true that you can't make money on facilities in a hard market? Well, let's find out. Welcome to Fact or Fiction with Artificial hosted by me, Georgie Simister. This is the podcast that separates fact from fiction in the world of insurance, debunks industry myths and explores game changing innovations shaping its future. I'm joined today by Daniel Prince.
Georgie:Dan is CEO of Augentic, where he leads the the company's vision to help brokers and carriers embrace the benefits of digital trading. A strategic executive and a change leader, Dan brings a strong track record of both insurance and using technologies to generate practical value. Dan has worked for Carriers, Company and Lloyds, and a large Lloyds broker and run an MGA, so brings rounded experience of the value chain. With Augentic, Dan is determined to enable people to take advantage of digital trading without the worry of all the costs and risks associated and really help clients deliver change within their organizations. I m also joined by Tom Squires as Head of Distribution and Digital Trading at AEGIS London.
Georgie:Tom leads AEGIS London's distribution strategy and function to strengthen relationships within brokers and
Georgie:strategic clients. He is focused on making access to syndicates' capacity simpler, cleaner and more connected, ensuring AEGIS London's partners fully understand the breadth of AEGIS London's project capabilities and expertise. Tom has led AEGIS London's digital trading division since 2019, helping to develop innovative solutions to make AEGIS London's underwriting expertise more accessible. This included responsibility for development of the syndicate s online quote and buying portal, Opel. In this episode, we discuss the partnership between Augentic and AEGIS and how timing and the right partnership can create facilities that thrive in a soft market and remain in the hard market.
Georgie:Welcome to Insurance Technology. I'm very happy to have you both here. My first time having two guests on the sofa, so really excited. Before we get into the details, can we set the scene for the listeners and talk a bit about AEGIS? Where do you sit in the London market and what made you want to tackle this problem head on?
Tom:So AEGIS London is a medium sized syndicate writing a traditional book of specialty business in Lloyd's. We are roughly about a billion dollars of premium and we only have one platform and that is the Lloyd's platform we trade from. I personally work in our digital trading division and that has been running now six years. We've been in the digital trading space for about ten years. We have an online quote to mind platform called Opel that we write about 100,000,150 million dollars through that.
Tom:I think that sets a mindset to look for other opportunities. Certainly Dan and I have worked together previously. And so when Dan was looking to start up a new venture, we kept in contact. And it was probably a meeting between the two of us and a concept came out. And I think what we are looking at here is how do you bring efficiency, how do you also reach different markets because we are only a Lloyd's platform and we need to carry on evolving and allowing people to come and trade with us in the most efficient way possible.
Georgie:Let's talk about the the market right now. So we're in a soft market, so facilities are popping up everywhere. And history tells us that when the market hardens, they get blown out the water. Why does this cycle keep repeating itself? Tom, if I come to you first.
Tom:Why does it keep on I think there's a point where profit becomes people look in a soft market to keep their top line growing. And if you grow your top line into a soft market, it is extremely difficult to then to make sure the bottom line is still performing. So ultimately, what happens is people start losing money, the market contracts and the facilities are probably the first areas that start losing out of that and they start shrinking. People want to almost bring it back to their underwriters and go, how do we have as much control as possible? And you have that control to someone else and it's not what they really want.
Tom:I think this goes to the longevity of what we are trying to do here as well is one of the unique things about AEGIS, there are other out there, we're privately owned and we're mutual. So very much, I know a lot of people talk about bottom line underwriting and I think everyone does. Look at it. I think frankly, all underwriters look at bottom line underwriting but there does come corporate pressures on what you need to do with your book and sometimes shareholders, etcetera, owners, investors want to look for growth at all costs. We've never had that pressure and I think that's been proven over the last ten years, fifteen years, we've been successful at really managing the cycle.
Tom:Part of what Dan and I very much talked about is the success of this really has to be through the cycle.
Georgie:And, Dan, what are your views on why history keeps repeating itself?
Dan:Tom's right. It's the control element. I think there's there's you know, underwriters seed control as the market softens for exactly as Tom said for those reasons of we want to stay relevant with the broker. We don't wanna lose a relationship with a broker because they will find new friends in a soft market as more capital comes in. And once you've lost a friend, it's hard to win them back.
Dan:So that's a key factor. Ultimately, the expense ratio bites, the claims come in, and you have to say kind of people have historically said enough is enough. We need to just be focusing on our open market underwriting approach. We just don't feel it needs to be that way in the future, and we can build sustainable facilities that can see the course of the cycle.
Georgie:On the topic of keeping friends, and London faces the challenge with staying relevant against other hubs. So you've got the likes of Bermuda, Singapore, and and, you know, elsewhere. Why do you think brokers do keep coming back to London year after year? And what is at risk if it does go wrong?
Dan:I think we're nice people. We're hospitable. Mhmm. London is still a really cool city to come and visit and spend time in. That's one part of it.
Dan:I think the other part of it is you still have a huge collection of talent. You have a huge collection of capital. It's still a very efficient place to get things done. You have lots of people who are prepared to do new things, who have access to catastrophe aggregate, which, as the market changes, gets in kind of scarce supply. And I think those factors will still draw people.
Dan:I think the challenge really sits around, you know, speed of service. I think what you've seen in the hubs is actually they're getting they're embracing technology. They've started from a place where they don't have a load of legacy like we do in London. Yeah. And therefore, they've almost jumped to how do we come up with a more digital way of doing things earlier.
Dan:And I think that's what we need to fight back against collectively. And I also think the talent is developing in those hubs, both people leaving London or just becoming a more mainstream profession of doing things in the hub. And I think all of that is a challenge to London to stay relevant.
Georgie:Just digging on a point that you said there about, like, people wanting to come to London, technology then potentially a competitor to the Lloyd's market?
Dan:I mean, personally, I see it as an enabler.
Dan:You could see it as, oh, there's gonna be disruption, and technology is gonna take away a load of what we do in London. I think, really, it should be a catalyst for us coming up with better products, more innovation. How do we close the kind of protection gap? So few people buy insurance
Dan:Really in the world. There is so much scope for us to grow it and double the size of London. And I think, really, it's your mindset. If you see that technology is gonna disrupt you and be a threat, you'll probably try and block it and keep it away from you. If you want to embrace what are the benefits it can bring of how it can enhance everything we do in London, then I think it'll be the best thing for us.
Georgie:We had a topic on this podcast a few months ago about, like, is Lloyd's slow to innovate? And it's not in terms of new products, but in terms of technology and enabling people to be efficient in Lloyd's. People might argue that it is a bit slower. Is that going to then create more challenges? Tom, what's your view on that?
Tom:Just going back to your original point, I think it's what does Lloyd's offer and I did fifteen years of underwriting and one of our management, there's a price for everything. I think the entrepreneurial side of Lloyds is still there. A huge amount of what we do is still face to face trading in Lloyds and we should not lose that. That's unique about Lloyds. What that does do is then drag a whole lot more risk and potential to what they're doing.
Tom:And my always having gone now, started in the underwriting side and moved to more the digital side, I think success comes how you marry the two together because we are unique. Lloyd's is a unique place. So we should never lose that subscription market, that risk that comes over them that no one really wants to touch and someone will give it a go. So I think that draws people in. We should use that to carry on offering all the other products.
Tom:And then by using digital, I think there's an opportunity. In the past, there were a load of risks that never made their way towards. How do we bring that efficiency and how do we use to distribute our products to a wider audience is where I'm coming from.
Georgie:On your experience then, if you went from underwriting to digital, what attracted you to that change?
Tom:Something different, something new, something that I saw was a growing area, and also a little bit of, this was seven years ago, insurtechs coming into the market where it was people outside the insurance world who were trying to bring technology and they weren't particularly marrying up with what does insurance actually want. And I was never gonna be a tech technical person. Was always coming from the business side. But I think the skill set of learning how to translate what the insurance was to developers, to the technical side there, was probably missing at that time. And I think encouraging more people to actually have insurance expertise.
Tom:Think I don't know what the stats on how many insurtechs are now not around that started there. Think in the 70s percent of the fail and pretty much every single time, it's failed because they haven't got an insurance professional in there. So I think there was a gap there. I also think I was in a firm that allowed people to move careers and supported it with a support that, look, if this doesn't work or if this is not gonna be the future, there's always another area you can go to.
Georgie:So the LMA published another report and I think it's something our listeners should know about. What were your key takeaways from the recent LMA report?
Dan:For me, if you look at the report as a whole, it really defined what were the differences between lead and follow and that you couldn't just categorize it very bluntly as I'm a leader or I'm a follower. And you're seeing the evolution of leaders being true leaders, people who may may lead excess layers or could be in that position, but then also the emergence of kind of portfolio solutions leaders as well, and that they actually carry a panel of portfolio underwriters behind them by being leaders in that space. So I think that was quite fundamental. The report is definitely worth going to have a read on the LMA website. The kind of bit for me is that's really interesting is still this massive mismatch of where carriers see themselves in terms of being relevant and where brokers perceive relevance.
Dan:Okay? For a broker, their job is super tough. It is hard to retain business. It's hard to win, even harder to win new business. And a lot of work goes into making sure that they are understanding their client, are able to portray that client to the underwriters in the correct possible way, make sure they've got the right coverage for them, really meeting the needs of that client in an ever more complex world.
Dan:And I think those carriers that really stand up and wow their clients in client meetings, stick by them when they have a large loss, are really there for them. That's where they really see a huge amount of value. The the easier part of a broker's job is completing the placement once they have those leaders in place. And I think the report still showed that there was a slight misconception of some of the people that were traditional followers, that really they were super important to the brokers, but the brokers didn't hold them in the same regard. So I think, you know, that's been a really common story throughout my career, but it still seems that misconception was there.
Dan:That was really highlighted in the report.
Georgie:Anything to add on that?
Tom:Yeah. I think coming from a from a carrier point of view, it just highlights how important it is because not one syndicate is a lead syndicate. You don't lead every single line of business. It's very important that you look at every line of business and really have a proper look and see what are you. Are you that market lead or are you a follower?
Tom:Because it's going to be so important over the next few years of how you distribute your products. If you're a true follower market, buying another couple of renting another couple of desks on the Ground Floor in Lloyd's is probably not the strategy you should be taking on because fundamentally, I think that is going to shrink and that report very much handed out. You should be thinking, how do I distribute that? You need to be talking to your brokers because fundamentally, the distribution will be dictated by your brokers. We're not going to tell brokers how we want to receive it.
Tom:We've really got to sit back and say, how do you want to trade with us? And do we have the abilities, abilities, the people, the capacity to trade in that way?
Georgie:So let's get into solving the problem. So the theme of this or the myth that we're debunking is that you can't make money on facilities. So let's talk about Augentic because that is really exciting. So walk us through the model, how it actually works, and if a broker's coming to AEGIS today, what happens next?
Dan:Yep. So everything Augentic has built has been around how do we help people adopt digital without having to change what they do today
Tom:Mhmm.
Dan:Or without having to invest large sums of money. So we don't want to break the broker's flow of how they like to work. We don't want to ask them to fill in portals or send really standardized emails to do things, and we don't want the carriers to, again, have to do something different to be able to follow AEGIS in this way and just make everyone's lives easy and be operationally excellent. What does that mean in terms of flow? It means at day one, the broker goes and collects AEGIS's terms like they would do today, face to face negotiation or email or however they're trading at this point in time.
Dan:They forward those terms and the submission to us by email. Our systems in the background are ingesting and structuring that data, and we house the rules of the digital consortium. And very quickly, we can go back to that broker and say, hey. We can now boost AEGIS' line with this extra capacity. From that point, the broker has a choice of how much they would like to take up of the consortium line.
Dan:They can email us back and say, please, can you firm order note this policy? And we complete it through their placing platform of choice. So no change to what they're doing currently, just a very efficient method of gathering extra capacity off the back of AEGIS.
Georgie:I think that plays onto the point that you were saying that you've got to meet brokers, work with their distribution. What does this look like for you?
Tom:Well, the first thing, and this doesn't disrupt what the underwriter does on a day to day basis. They are trading as though we had this partnership or didn't have this partnership. So that's quite a key part of this. And actually, a lot of this is getting the buy in. And frankly, our underwriters have got the buy in because they're not having to do anything different.
Tom:But it also means they are able to underwrite in exactly the same ways we expect as the exec our underwriting exec team for them to underwrite that. So I think it brings relevance. Are not the largest syndicate out there and sometimes we've been quite successful with the line size we put out there. But that does also limit to what people there are people who want the larger line sizes, want more capacity. This by having an AEGIS stamped down opens up immediately that you are suddenly far more relevant.
Tom:And relevance is a leader but it's not just lead, it's also significant follow, which is very much going back to the LMA report. It does put us there as a real significant follow there as well. And with my digital hat on, this is I think a mindset as well. We want to work with people who've got digital solutions. And I think that is having now, as I said, ten years of AEGIS doing digital trading, also buying in from your board as well.
Tom:This is not the easiest thing to do. There are I've had plenty of conversations with some quite traditional underwriters who've gone, This is the end of the market. And when you actually explain to them that what we're doing with Augentic is what's been going on for three fifty years, it's just been done in a far more efficient way. You know, I started underwriting twenty five years ago. You still had follow markets who just went, I like the leader.
Tom:I trust what the price is. I trust what the wording is. I'll put my line down. We're now offering something to brokers that are just far more efficient on it.
Georgie:There's plenty of single line consortia out there for being grammatically correct. But you're doing something different with multiline. Why is that so hard to do? So why is multiline so hard to do? And why do you think no one else has cracked it?
Dan:There's very few. You could count on one hand the number of syndicates that you could say, right, who have trusted underwriters across all their lines of business. I think that's very few. And that goes back to what Tom was saying earlier around. Within most syndicates, you have five or six divisions where they're leaders and five or six divisions where they probably spend as much time following as they do leading excess layers or other areas.
Dan:And therefore for us, was a choice of, okay, where does a market sit that can be trusted across the piece? And there is a high level of trust with AEGIS, which is fundamental to the play. AEGIS also don't traditionally max their line size out with reinsurance when the market cycle changes. And therefore, the kind of modest line size deployment of AEGIS through the cycle, again, lends itself to it is beneficial to brokers to be able to have a boost behind the AEGIS line. So I think it was really the combination of those factors that makes it the perfect partner for us to work with.
Georgie:What's your take on this?
Tom:Very nice, Dan said. Partnership, I think, is a really key thing, a long term partnerships to this as well, to have trust from a follow market that across your board does come with the results and that's something that we're very proud of. We probably don't shout about it at all. It's not really a mutual mentality to shout about it. We're very conscious that there's always that fall.
Tom:But I think we put our hair shirts on a lot and we're constantly looking for the fall. And I think that keeps us where we are at the moment and it's bottom line focused. I also think we've been with the conversation with Dan and with the market behind us, we've been planning for this soft market for five years. And so we have a very clear strategy of what we think we should be doing, we built that trust up and we're now actually thinking about what we should be doing in the hard market because the success of this will be the profits of the depth of the soft market and then putting ourselves in the position to take advantage of the hard market.
Georgie:And how difficult has it been to get to this point? Like, with all your conversations, what's going on? Has this been quite an easy agreement? Like, what has this looked like?
Tom:I think it's the concept. It's how's the market gonna perceive this? Are we gonna lose signings? I've answered 150 questions and we've had to challenge ourselves over it. Is this, you know, do brokers want to use Augentic?
Tom:And I think we've got to a place where the two of us have talked about this quite in-depth that it still needs to be the broker's choice. Okay. If I, as AEGIS, start forcing people to do this, potentially, people will stop coming to see AEGIS writing business. It is still the broker's risk, it is still their policy, they should have the choice what they do. What our challenge is, is to show them that the choice they have is extremely efficient and a very good way of doing it.
Georgie:The cost of handling claims and risk engineering and price is getting more complex. How does the Augentic model help the true market leaders keep investing in their client rather than just absorbing the cost?
Dan:I think that part of this model is that there is a small leader's fee. And I think that's been discussed for years since SmartFollow. For the last five years, people have been asking, well, what about the leaders? Shouldn't we be paid? There's a forever debate of, as Tom said earlier, three hundred and fifty years of people following leaders and not necessarily paying the leader a leader's fee for that privilege of doing it.
Dan:And then from the leader's point of view going, well, really, that cost of leadership is going up all the time. You know, the the cost of people or traveling or finding the right loss adjusters or getting the right data to help people quickly at the point of a claim, helping people with risk prevention through strong risk engineering, and really the technicality of underwriting. It's never getting simpler. The world is ever more complex. Supply chains are more interwoven.
Dan:You just need to look at the geopolitical situation at the moment. It is harder and harder to get things just right for the client and make sure that you're meeting their needs and their evolving needs as we go through. And I think I've spent time thinking, no. You shouldn't be paid as the leader. The benefit is that you have control of the risk and you set the price, and you're in control of the claims.
Dan:And I think probably now I've come to the point of thinking, well, actually, there is real value in what those true leaders are doing in the market, and there is probably some compensation that's due for it. So I think I think that's where I've I've landed on it.
Georgie:Would you agree?
Tom:I think the one area that you chose to mention there is claims. We fundamentally had ensured our shop window is the claims department. You are buying a promise to pay and if you're not fulfilling that service, you failed, really. Probably the thing we do shout about is we've done ten years of Grace Church being outstanding on our claims team. We are hugely proud of that and I don't think enough people talk about their claims side.
Tom:It is, as I said, fundamentally what is being bought. So why is that front of center of what everyone does? And as a leader, we have a great claims department that is integrated very much within the firm as well. And we need to carry on with that being at the outstanding level for our clients.
Georgie:When brokers are talking about the claim service to their clients, where does it come in a level of importance?
Tom:I think I can't talk completely for them, but I'm probably not very high up. But I blame syndicates for that. I don't think we talk about enough. I have taken on new role of heading up our distribution side and trying to work out what is our story, what should we be telling our brokers. And it's very obvious that the twenty five years that AEGIS we're very proud of our claims.
Tom:We don't put that into our marketing. We don't put it into the We need to do far more of that because I do think it differentiates. I don't know. Ultimately, the price is really what it comes down to. But it's something that should be talked about more even though it probably is not top of the list.
Dan:It really varies by size of client. So if you're talking at the more commodity end of the market, then the client is probably more interested in the price. That's their fundamental decision making point. I think when you get up to large risk managed clients that have experienced the difference between a good claim service and a bad claim service, they are more likely to ask the right questions, and the broker is more forthright in positioning markets that have exceptional claims handling experience. That really is the difference.
Dan:And I think it will also vary by line of business as well. But I think when you are really looking at those RFPs for large clients, brokers are really pushing claims service. That is something they will talk about with their client.
Georgie:I had another podcast we were talking. We were talking about claims boring. We debunked the myth that actually claims are not boring. And what he was saying was that the role of the claims handler is growing and they are now becoming more kind of client facing people that can help, I guess, understanding the risk a bit more from the claims side of view. So that probably echoes the part of like maybe the claims are becoming more important
Tom:across I the think they're very important in the underwriting part of it. We will bring our claims department in when we're making decisions on the underwriting side because they will have views, they'll have experience that not necessarily the underwriters have had as well.
Georgie:So let's talk about the markets on the panel. These are markets that you're already working with. Is that correct?
Dan:So Augentic doesn't believe in having its own marketplace of carriers. Think how we would like to work is if we're working with brokers setting something up, it should be the markets that they want to use. Our approach would be, not our brokers all have placement strategies. They all have strategic markets that they work with, and it is not our place to go and tell people where to place their business. It's their business.
Dan:Trust exists between brokers and carriers already in the marketplace. We don't need to do that role. So, no, we don't we don't thrust markets on people. Mhmm. In this deal, what we've looked at is very much who do we think are good companion markets for AEGIS?
Dan:And then we've looked at where would the value be for brokers here. So is it actually going to the portfolio solutions teams of carriers? And, therefore, you can still work with big brand name carriers, but maybe they have more of a follow leaning towards them, and they can still work with the open market team. So they potentially can double up the capacity from syndicates they're working with.
Georgie:Right.
Dan:And so we're not trying to chip away or erode the kind of any of the value of the broker relationships with the open market underwriting teams already.
Georgie:What do these markets mean for you?
Tom:It is the partnership I talked about beforehand. This is a consortium, so this is all Lloyd's capacity. And I think that's key to this. I don't think we could have gone outside the Lloyd's market for this follow-up capacity. I think that brings almost a barrier for the brokers to use.
Tom:We had to have the same security. Are all names that all the open market will know as well and trust. And I think it's going to be that trust element from the broker to allow this follow-up market to come, which I think we've built up. We've got a great partnership, we've got people following us.
Georgie:So we're heading into a prolonged soft market where there's overcapacity everywhere. How do you make a case for the brokers right now when premiums are falling and facilities are ever competing for their attention? What is your your plug for brokers?
Dan:I think quite simple, really. Look. As the brokers face more and more pressure in the hard market, they're not constantly looking over their shoulder of, is someone stealing this risk, or is there gonna be a better price in the market? Brokers work harder at this point in the cycle than any other point in the cycle of covering the market. Mhmm.
Dan:Because you have clients that have had a sustained period of paying a fairly substantial price, and therefore, they're all willing to listen to other brokers coming to them saying, oh, you've been paying too much. I can get you a better deal. Okay? So at this point, it is remiss of a broker to make sure that they're not going to see absolutely everyone
Tom:to
Dan:get the job done. So whilst there is a lot of capacity, there is actually a lot of ground for brokers to cover and their job is tough. And therefore, this solution, think look, we we were trying to balance two things. How do we help with the efficiency of placement? How do we help with the speed of placement?
Dan:How do we build a panel that doesn't give them too much capacity? Because that can be a problem as well. And therefore, just finding just the right amount to go alongside the kind of AEGIS line size that actually, okay, this is an out of place. Because if you take too much capacity from one market and their appetite suddenly changes and you have to go and replace it all, that's a lot of work for the broker as well. So yes, it's never an easy task when there's lots of people kind of begging for business at this point.
Dan:But we've hopefully, we found the right balance.
Georgie:What's your plug for brokers, Tom?
Tom:I kinda leave that to Dan because it's for me, we shouldn't be plugging in. We should carry on doing exactly what we've been doing and underwrite in exactly the same way that AEGIS has underwritten for fifteen years. We shouldn't suddenly go, this is great. We got to follow capacity. We're now doing something different.
Tom:So my view is the success of this is if he just carries on doing exactly what he just has been doing and we don't actually change what we've we don't make a sudden U-turn in anything, I think that will bring the success of this and the partnership that Dan and I have built up should then bring out success. There's obviously the communications as well. We've got to communicate this. This is one of the reasons I'm slightly, we're talking about it here is to have that mindset because it's great having something in place. But if you're not if people don't know about it, they're gonna use it.
Tom:So I think that that's a bit of a challenge, but we'll do a huge amount for that.
Dan:Look, we're also gonna remunerate the brokers as well. So we're gonna share the commission that we earn as an MGA with the brokers to try and encourage change and trying something new. And, really, the brokers have to explain this new concept to their clients
Georgie:Right.
Dan:As well. So it's not as easy as going, oh, instead of being with this Lloyd's market, we're now with this Lloyd's market. The clients are gonna ask questions around, okay, well, what is this new consortium? How does it how does it work? Is it good for me or not?
Dan:So there is effort for changing markets for the broker. And we think, again, they should be compensated for helping us manage that change in how the market operates. So that's the other way we'll get brokers to work with us. We're gonna chuck them a bit of extra money at a time where actually they need it with rates dropping off.
Georgie:So this podcast should be going out following the announcement of this new partnership. But for anyone listening, like day one, how can they get in touch? How can they what does it look like for, like, practically for the brokers that are wanting to work with you?
Dan:So they would just come and talk to us at Augentic, and we'll talk them through if they don't currently have a TOBA with us or they just want to hear more about the lines of business that are covered or how that process will work or how do I do an endorsement, all of those things. Do you actually have underwriters? Because there'll be times where brokers are trying to win new business and they don't have all the information. And can I just phone someone to get a steer as if, would it work? All of those things.
Dan:Just come to us. AEGIS will have fact sheets and FAQs and everything to share as well. But, yeah, we're probably the first port of call.
Tom:We've educated all of our underwriters, and they know about Augentic. It's really for them to offer it as an option. Yes, we would love them to use as much as possible, but it's a balance between you've got to go to it or, Look, I think this will be a very efficient way of you getting a follow line. You've got our line down. We know pretty much what you can get out of Augentic and showing them the path of least resistance is probably the way to go about it.
Georgie:And I'm sure once it's up and going and they start placing the first few risks through it, it will start to snowball once they see the the efficiency gain. Yeah. Well, you're not gonna believe it. It's time for my last question. We've absolutely flown through this So this is your future outlook.
Georgie:So if you were to look ahead, what does success look like for this model in five years' time? And if it works in the way that you hope it will work, what does the London market look like? And what role do you think that you will both play in it?
Tom:Success is profitability. Has to be if this is not profitable, it's not gonna be a success. So we look for a long term through the cycle profitability in this. And we want them to be underwriting, looking after our pen just as much as their pen. I think what you've got here is a bunch of underwriters who are doing exactly that without really knowing that they've got a follow market behind them.
Tom:So success for me is without doubt profits. I also think we need to make sure that we are trying to drive as many brokers to this as well. We want the follow market to have a good indexation of what AEGIS is writing. That's really what they're following here. Where does that look?
Tom:I think you can make this more and more efficient. I think with broker support, and this would only be with broker support and we've talked about this as what are the next stages, where do we take this? At the moment, the broker has to go and find that follow capacity through Dan. Ultimately, if that broker then sees real value in it, we have the technology that we can actually pass that information straight to Dan. But we would never do it without getting the permission from the broker.
Tom:So suddenly, you're getting an e just lying down and then you're probably within hours, now I'd love to be minutes or seconds, there's an offer of a follow capacity behind it. That's where I think we will sit.
Georgie:In five years' time, we might be minutes behind.
Dan:Yeah. So I truly think there'll be connectivity between AEGIS' underwriting platform and Augentic's platform.
Dan:And as soon as the AEGIS underwriter quotes, that quote of the follow will be there that they can have a point of sale with the broker saying, is this an option that you would like as well? And I think, you know, that is the future direction of of where we're going, of creating ecosystems of the digitally able to really boost productivity of what we can do. And, aligned to that, I think the big success for me is we're winning more in London. Mhmm. We don't want to see reduced signings in London as the market softens.
Dan:We want to keep people to be bringing new business into London, business that they didn't think was efficient to come here.
Tom:Mhmm.
Dan:And therefore, they have a complete change in mindset, and we can help double the size of Lloyd's. I think that would be something that we're aiming towards.
Tom:I'm going to jump in there with the efficiency part. I think we could do that now Between our two companies, we could do that efficiency now. But both of our lessons learned, probably in what we're doing, we need to make sure it's the right time and the market actually wants it because you tend to look at forcing an issue. We are a very old market that when you force something like this, it doesn't work. So I think it's the right we're doing it at the right pace.
Tom:And I don't think technology is the thing that holds it back. I think it's the market and the way we work. We need to make sure this is the right time, the right speed for everyone to adopt it. I think it's a really key point to this.
Georgie:Well, thank you both for being guests on my podcast, and good luck for your partnership.
Dan:Thank you very much. Thank you.