Our Christmas letter 2019
December 12, 2019 Chris Sandilands
It’s the end of the year, the end of the decade and the end of another fast-paced year for Oxbow Partners.
First and foremost, we’d like to thank all of our clients for their continued trust in us and wish everyone a peaceful Christmas period and successful 2020.
It is our impression that the family Christmas letter is a dying art from – the ability to show off the family’s achievements and successes, but without appearing to be bragging. Oxbow Partners sits at the collision of traditional insurance and the future, and so it seems fitting that we should seek to keep the tradition of the letter alive, but present it in this digital form.
So, what’s Oxbow Partners 2019 news?
The family is getting bigger
Our team has grown again this year. We have hired at all levels from manager to intern and are continuing to look for exceptional team members. Our ambition is to be the most trusted, best informed, and most entrepreneurial insurance advisory firm in Europe and have more fun delivering than any of our competitors. If that sounds exciting and if you have consulting experience on your CV, then please contact us.
We are particularly pleased that we now have two previous summer interns (Oxford and Cambridge) on our permanent team, and that this summer’s intern (Oxford again) will be joining in 2020. In a competitive marketplace, we see this as evidence that Oxbow Partners provides a stretching and rewarding place for high calibre graduates to work.
Keeping our feet on the ground
One of our company values includes the words “be humble”. It is important to us that we all remain grounded and appreciate the great privilege that we enjoy in our secure personal and fulfilling professional lives. This is reflected in our policy of giving all employees two volunteering days every year. One of our team, Lucy Alphonse, recently spent two days with a mental health charity, Sound Minds, where she already volunteers some evenings. Here’s a link to a short blog post about it.
What do we do?
In November we welcomed our now second-newest team member, Eden Grusd. Eden is our marketing manager who is charged with taking our publications to the next level in 2020. She’s been interviewing clients about their perceptions of Oxbow Partners – and discovered that many people are unfamiliar with our range of services. Here’s a quick overview:
In 2019 we took the step of splitting our business into an Insights business and a Consulting business.
Meet Insights
Our Market Intelligence product helps management teams have better discussion and make better decisions about their strategy through regular quantitative and qualitative market analysis. We have hired an equity analyst to run this business from February – look out for an announcement – and if you’d like to find out more about this product, please get in touch.
We’re also launching an exciting InsurTech platform in 2019 and have just hired a product manager to lead that – look out for an announcement in late February.
Consulting goes from strength to strength
Our consulting business has grown strongly this year. Examples of projects that we have worked on include:
Strategy & M&A
- UK M&A strategy for a large insurer
- Group innovation strategy for various (re)insurers
- Due diligence of a UK mid-market broker
Operations & Claims
- Reorganisation of a major division of a global insurer
- Claims transformation for a European multi-national insurer
- End-to-end digital transformation of a European local player
Technology & Data
- Claims system vendor selection for a UK motor insurer
- Technology due diligence of various acquisition targets
- Data strategy for a European run-off player
InsurTech Impact 25 turns 3
In February we published our 2019 InsurTech Impact 25 report, the paper’s second edition. This document has been downloaded tens of thousands of times from our website and become a reference document for executives and investors. This gives us tremendous insight into the insurance technology world, which we have used for commercial and technology due diligences as well as various strategies for brokers, insurers and reinsurers. The 2020 paper has been in progress since September with a dedicated team reviewing in detail each of the 59 detailed submissions. Make sure you are subscribed to our mailing lists to receive a copy in Q1.
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There’s much more to tell, but most people probably stopped reading long ago. We wish those who made it to the end a particularly happy 2020 and look forward to keeping in touch.
