Our Christmas Letter 2024

December 19, 2024

They say that each year passes quicker than the last, and that is certainly how it feels at Oxbow Partners. Next year is our tenth birthday and, according to government statistics on the age distribution of businesses, Oxbow Partners is now one of the older companies in the country. But we’re not retiring any time soon; we’re only just getting started. We’re happy to share some of the things we have accomplished in 2024 in our traditional Christmas Letter, and thank our team and clients for being part of the journey.

Our 2024 highlights

2024 felt like a transformational year for the firm. We entered the year as challengers with momentum and think that we have ended it with our reputation firmly established as leaders in domains such as the London Market, reinsurance, and global specialty. This is exactly what we set out to do in “Chapter 3” of the business.

Our progress was a combination of both client work and publications. Highlights were:

• Our report, with the Lloyd’s Market Association, on Enhanced Underwriting. This paper explored the impact of technology on the ‘slip of the future’ and what that means for specialty insurers
• Our London Market CEO Agenda, identifying the key themes for executives in 2025
• Our paper outlining strategic imperatives for P&C Reinsurers in 2025
• Our DA report, in which we consider recent trends, what it takes to succeed in the space, and how insurers can be successful through the next market cycle
• Our report considering the opportunity for generative AI in the specialty and reinsurance markets

Our UK&I retail franchise also remains strong and we have helped several clients with strategic topics as sentiment in the market has improved. Our market insight is elevated by our Market Intelligence team, which publishes our annual motor market report. Next year we plan to extend our proprietary UK Market Model into home insurance – if you are interested in participating, please contact our team.

Indeed our Market Intelligence team is expanding its coverage and we now have several proprietary tools including:

• Our London Market cost model, through which we can identify syndicates that need to address their cost structures as market conditions change
• Our Reinsurance Market Model, which contains detailed performance data on 19 of the largest P&C reinsurers representing nearly $400bn of GWP
• Our European Ceded Re tool, which identifies profit pools in the European reinsurance market
• Our UK retail claims model, which uses sophisticated statistical methodology to help clients identify their sources of claims under/outperformance

In February we were also pleased to be included in the Financial Times’s listing of the top insurance advisory firms in the UK for the fourth consecutive year.

We are proud to count many C-level executives as our clients and are in dialogue with numerous management teams around the world including almost all of the London Market and reinsurance market. We continue to be frequent visitors to Bermuda, Continental Europe and increasingly the East Coast.

“What do you do again?”

Heard the name but can’t quite place us?

We are a management consulting firm serving exclusively the insurance industry. Our portfolio of work splits roughly equally between the global reinsurers, London Market and specialty players, and UK&I retail. We also support private equity and trade buyers with M&A (due diligence and integration).

The topics we cover are strategy, operating models and technology, and often a combination of all of these as part of a strategic transformation. Our favourite projects are a continuous cycle of helping management teams figure out what to do, and helping them do it really well.

If you would like to find out more, please contact the team.

People

We were pleased to attract some excellent talent to Oxbow Partners in 2024 including both graduates and experienced hires. We are proud to have built a brand that can now attract and retain professionals from “MBB”.

We were pleased to build out our retained Senior Advisor group in 2024 with the announcement that Anthony Stevens had joined the firm. Anthony was one of the founders of Oliver Wyman’s insurance practice, where he was a partner for nearly 20 years. He then moved to be Group Strategy Director at RSA. From there he moved to Marsh as Chief Data Officer before becoming the Head of International Development and later President (International) of Victor, Marsh’s MGA. Anthony therefore brings a unique mix of advisory capability and corporate experience with several pockets of deep functional and geographic expertise.

Our growth journey continues and we are hiring at all levels. If you would like to find out more about Oxbow Partners, please review the careers pages on our website.

Attracting talent to the industry – our 2025 mission

We continue to sponsor the Cambridge University Ladies Netball Club and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford men’s and women’s football teams. (The latter have a clause in their contract that if they don’t use up their budget on a night out the contract will not be renewed.)

Whilst it is clearly true that talent is found in many pockets around the UK and not necessarily just at the top universities, we continue to be disappointed by the lack of effort that the insurance industry makes to attract graduates from the country’s leading institutions. The disappointment becomes even starker when you consider how desirable careers in the industry are in other centres such as Zurich or Munich.

We recently presented to the Cambridge netball team, and – unsurprisingly – it was the first insurance presentation any of them had heard and several of the attendees expressed an interest in applying to Oxbow Partners. Maybe we had succeeded in our mission to show that insurance is a lot more interesting than the uninitiated may think.

We are keen to promote the industry more actively to the nation’s top talent. If any of our partners are keen to work on this jointly in 2025, we are all ears.

Giving thanks

It’s been another great year for the firm but none of what we have achieved would have been possible without the hard work of our team – consultants, business services and external partners such as our fantastic intern/graduate recruiting partners Capua. Thanks to all of you for your efforts in 2024. We are proud that we have built a business where our team can grow in expertise and experience so quickly, and we look forward to working with all of you in 2025 and beyond.

And thank you to our clients for your continued trust in us and we look forward to further work with you.

Happy Christmas and a healthy New Year to everyone,

The Oxbow Partners team