Spencer Honoree Peter Garvey On Current Insurance Industry Trends

What are some current trends in the insurance industry you are seeing?

Peter Garvey, Vice Chairman of Galway Insurance Holdings

At the beginning of the year, I passed my chief executive duties for EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants on to Steve Denton. I’ve now taken on a role at our holding company (Galway) where I can focus on a few strategic projects across our collective companies that I’m excited about: international expansion and strategy, specialty development, and consolidated placement and insurer relations.  Having grown to a level where scale can enable real improvement in outcomes for clients, greater support for our colleagues as well as better prospects for our shareholders, these are all obvious next steps for us.  Our geographic footprint in the US now covers most of the country such that it’s time for us to set our sights on multinational expansion.  We just closed on a London market business, with more to follow.  Our specialty expertise has broadened to cover most products, client industries and market segments.  Connecting everyone and making it easy for them to work together across distances and divisional boundaries is always a challenge but the benefits are more than worth it.  In an odd way the pandemic shutdown has softened those challenges.  Our billions in premium throughput can be handled with greater efficiency and technology utilization to everyone’s’ benefit.  Consolidated placement can achieve several positive outcomes---it builds placement as a specialty unto itself, it helps carriers to access the full breadth of our distribution more effectively, and done right, it produces higher quality service, price and terms for our clients.

Two significant trends gaining increased attention in the industry, particularly on the brokerage side, are consolidation supported by broadened investor interest, and the race to successfully utilize technology applications and big data.  The agency roll up model has just about run its course---there just aren’t enough agencies left to satisfy the demand.  Acquirers are all rethinking their growth strategies, which span broadening their appetite beyond agencies, repositioning their business as an insuretech, to merging with each other.  The recent popularity for IPOs will influence these strategies.

The race to successfully utilize technology applications and big data is still on its first lap and has hit some speed bumps as it moves beyond single product and personal lines and small commercial enterprises.  While most of it is still largely aspirational and will require many more iterations, the increased focus and high current valuations given to these efforts will ultimately deliver successes.

All of this means the industry desperately needs to attract great minds well into the future to help it adapt and succeed, against a backdrop of an aging insurance workforce.  This is where organizations like the Spencer Educational Foundation come in, and they need our full support.