Today’s guest is Miles Wuller, President and CEO of Ryan Specialty Underwriting Managers, the underwriting arm of Ryan Specialty. As such Miles is responsible for more than 20 MGUs, offering more than 150 lines of business and employing around 550 staff in 27 offices who wrote $2.4bn of Gross Premium in 2021. This means he has a fantastic view of the market and where all its pressure points are to be found. A listen to this podcast will definitely get you right up to speed with all the cut and thrust of US and international specialist lines. But Miles is also a great business builder and manager and in our chat we really get to the heart of the Ryan Specialty modus operandi. For instance, how does Miles keep an incredibly diverse business with multiple brands, housing a huge variety of underwriting entrepreneurs within a core strategic Ryan Specialty identity and culture? Very few executives have to maintain and incentivise innovation and creativity on such a scale while at the same time keeping on top of all the compliance and reporting demands of a major unit of a fast-growing public company. Miles exudes a calm competence at every turn and it is abundantly clear that he thinks really deeply about the industry. For instance his thoughts on the effects of inflation on the sector, cyber insurance, his business’s relationship with technology, and the burgeoning hybrid carrier phenomenon are highly insightful. And that’s just to mention four topics among many more. Suffice to say that I learnt an awful lot during this interview and I think that you will too.

NOTES:

A couple of property abbreviations:

TIV=Total Insured Values. SOV=Statement of Values Also a request. If anyone can tell me any significant difference between a Managing General Agent (MGA) and a Managing General Underwriter (MGU), please let me know. After 30 years of head-scratching, I think they are completely interchangeable transatlantic versions of each other. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com/ We also thank this Episode’s advertising supporter Oxbow Partners https://oxbowpartners.com/

Ep128 Miles Wuller of Ryan Specialty Underwriting Managers: Enabling Masters of their trade

The Voice of Insurance