Our Christmas letter 2020

December 16, 2020 Chris Sandilands

“Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast.”

Ron Burgundy, the superstar news anchorman, always finds the right words for seminal world events. None of these cliched phrases like “unprecedented” and “new normal” that the rest of us use.

The team at Oxbow Partners hopes that, all things considered, you had a reasonable, perhaps even good, 2020 and are looking forward to a Christmas break. Of course, this will not be true for all our readers, Covid-related or otherwise; our sympathies are with you and we hope that you can look to 2021 with optimism.

Oxbow Partners had a strong 2020. We have added new clients, grown revenue by c.35%, and doubled our team – a result we would have very happily accepted back in March. Indeed, we have been constrained only by the number of top-quality people we can recruit – if you know anyone who fits our profile, please do send them our way!

Market Intelligence team expanded

We were happy to welcome Paul De’Ath as Head of Market Intelligence in February this year. Paul has over nine years of equity research experience with a focus on the UK insurance industry (and previously worked in strategy and finance roles in the industry). He is providing our subscribers with regular analysis and insight on strategic issues such as the recent FCA Pricing Fairness review. Our research is provided both as research notes and “live” briefings for executive teams and boards. Our weekly Covid-19 news roundup is available to all.

Adam Alvarez joined in October to extend the product into reinsurance. Adam has twenty years’ experience of underwriting, analytics and research in the industry and has worked for Hiscox Re (for whom he helped set up the Bermuda office), RMS and Guy Carpenter. Our reinsurance product currently comprises a quarterly cedent insights product and a peer comparison report.

Get in touch to find out more.

Magellan

We launched Magellan, our insurance technology navigator, through a partnership with the world’s premier insurance technology and innovation conference, InsureTech Connect, in October.

The insurance technology landscape is getting ever more fragmented and therefore complicated to navigate. Magellan helps business, technology and innovation executives at insurers, brokers and MGAs find the best technology vendors for their needs. The platform provides information about nearly 2,000 vendors and features such as curated collections and the ability to review and share.

To find out about a subscription, please contact us.

Hiring

We have stepped up our hiring efforts at all levels.

In October we welcomed Stephen Ferguson to the team as our Talent Advisor. Stephen will be focused on experienced hires (manager and above) and brings 20 years of experience working in insurance head hunting. We are hiring now and you can reach him here if you are keen to find out more.

We welcomed another group of interns over the summer, offering permanent positions to all of them. To find out about our summer internship programme, click here and please consider letting your friends and relatives know too.

Client work in 2020

Our client work has spanned the four areas described on our new website (see below).

Growth:

We have helped reinsurers develop client propositions that complement their core treaty offering.
We have helped personal lines insurers understand how their markets are changing and where to focus their investment.
We have helped a leading health insurer identify opportunities to grow in different customer segments in a rapidly changing market.

Operations:

We have supported the management team of a leading UK personal lines insurer with a post-merger integration, including strategy elements, detailed operating model design and implementation planning.
We have helped a reinsurer develop an operating model that is ‘fit for the future’.

Technology:

Helped clients design technology strategies and select new insurance technology platforms covering both incumbent as well as ‘InsurTech’ technologies.

M&A:

We have conducted technical and commercial due diligence on UK mid-market companies.

New website

We also got a new website which explains more clearly what we do and what we think about. Please feel free to have a look.

You’ll also find our Impact 25 reports (downloaded well over 10,000 times each), articles on insurance strategy, operations and technology on our blog, and over 200 InsurTech profiles on Bitesize InsurTech.

We enter 2021 with optimism and hope that you do so too.