Feeling the music in the maths

Have you spent much time in Bermuda until now?

No, I’d never been to the Island before and I arrived less than two weeks before starting my role as chief executive officer. Under normal circumstances, I’d have visited before joining the team, but the pandemic made that impractical. I have good friends who’ve lived here, and they gave me the impression that Bermuda was a magical island and a fantastic place to raise young children. When the offer came up, I did not think twice. The decision was easy.

At first sight, the ocean and beaches are even more beautiful than they look in pictures. I’ve been struck by how friendly everybody is and proud of their home—the Island is so clean and well cared for. I’m no stranger to island life: my mum and sister’s family live in Orkney, a small group of islands off the north coast of the Scottish mainland and, while the landscape and weather couldn’t be more different, I find island communities have so much in common.

Perhaps the comparative isolation creates greater community connection and, as a result, greater resilience and resourcefulness—things we have all needed to draw on in the past year.

Tell us about your background and your career path to date.

I was born and raised in Leeds, a city in the North of England with a vibrant music scene. I started playing the piano at the age of six, followed by the viola and harp. I trained as a classical musician, obtaining my Master’s degree in music from the University of Edinburgh and a postgraduate diploma in performance from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

I then embarked on a career in music playing the harp in orchestras and for functions, and performed at the Royal Albert Hall.

Given that I am now the chief executive officer of a reinsurance company in Bermuda, you can see that my career path has taken a very different direction than I initially set out on.

Although I was a good musician, I felt that I would never reach the level I aspired to. By way of analogy, my pursuit of mastery as a classical musician would be similar to a footballer needing to play in the top leagues in order to realise personal and professional fulfilment. So, while the move to Bermuda might seem significant—and indeed it is a significant move—the most momentous career decision I ever made was to switch from being a professional musician to an accountant.

To the outside, this might seem unusual, but it’s quite common for people with musical talent to be good at mathematics, and my experience has proved how it translates. Numbers have always interested me, and I appreciate the complexity that can come out of a basic system or pattern. It’s like learning scales—once you understand the pattern, the rest comes easily.

I started at PwC, where I trained as a chartered accountant. This was a fantastic foundation because you gain skills that can apply to almost any industry of your choosing, as accountancy is a portable qualification and PwC has global scale.

The decision to shift careers paid off and in 2007 I was presented with the opportunity to move to Australia, where I was based for nearly five years, auditing insurance and asset-management clients. While there, I spent some time working in Hong Kong and India, which gave me an excellent grounding in international business, which has prepared me well for the nature of business in Bermuda.

After 15 years with PwC, a tremendous opportunity came up at the Legal & General Group (L&G) in the UK and I leapt at the chance. While leaving a Big Four firm to move into industry was a weighty decision, it was a risk that paid off. It was very different, but I relished the challenge of shifting from being a consultant to many clients to working for a company.

Initially, I was head of audit for four of L&G’s businesses and later became finance director, defined contribution and retail, for L&G Investment Management (LGIM). This encompassed planning and forecasting, decision support on business projects, investment appraisal for opportunities and management reporting for business stakeholders.

I held several governance roles including as a director on the L&G UCITS ETF board and as chair of LGIM’s asset pricing and valuations committee. Working at that level helped me to build relationships across the organisation and see the bigger picture of how the group works, experience I’m leveraging now in my new role.

In 2018, I was seconded to the UK government for eight months as senior policy lead in the independent review of the Financial Reporting Council. As a business leader, this provided invaluable insight into the workings of government.

When the opportunity to lead L&G Reinsurance arose, I felt it was the right next step for me. Launched seven years ago as the group’s international reinsurance hub, L&G Re is no longer a startup, but it is young, entrepreneurial, forward-thinking and innovative, especially in terms of its use of technology.

What appeals most is the autonomy of the role. You can wrap your arms around the entirety of the business, get to know everyone in it and everything about it—that was attractive to me. On a personal level, I’m raising my two-year-old son and Bermuda is a great place to bring him up.

I haven’t abandoned my love for music. I acted as governor of the Royal Northern College of Music where I’d obtained my postgraduate degree and I’m looking for opportunities to help young people in Bermuda who have musical ambitions, but not the same opportunities for exposure as students in the UK.

What are your priorities for L&G Re?

I’m coming in with an open mind. My first priority is to build on the impressive foundations laid by my predecessor, Thomas Olunloyo, and the talented and committed team here.

From launching as a startup in 2014, L&G Re has grown into a $30 billion company and a leading player in the pension risk transfer (PRT) business. With the ageing population and low interest rates, I believe there is a growing demand for the certainty we can provide to clients and end users. I see great opportunities for us.

How much of an impact has COVID-19 had on the business?

While everybody was working from home for significant periods of time, there was no interruption or slowdown in business because of the technology we had in place. We built our own web-based platform, Elevate, to run our underwriting and pricing in the cloud.

Managers can access key business metrics in real time through an app—this is data that used to take weeks to calculate. Despite the global challenges of 2020, L&G Re delivered strong financial results and continued its growth trajectory. We posted a record full-year profit and return on equity was 40 percent. At year end, total assets were $29.8 billion, and our employee engagement scores have remained high throughout the pandemic.

Colleagues are now starting to return to the office, but it isn’t really changing the way we do business. However, it is excellent timing for me personally to be able to get to know my new team more closely, which I believe can only benefit us.

In the past year, we received ratings upgrades from Fitch and Standard & Poor’s, recognising our role as a core operating entity of the group. L&G Re won plaudits for our adverse mortality stop loss cover, which protected our portfolio of mortality business against a global pandemic, and was executed just a few months in advance of the COVID-19 pandemic being declared.

The past 18 months has brought much hardship across the world, so I hope the team can reflect on their achievements with pride against a backdrop of individual and collective challenges.

What do you see as the biggest challenges facing the business?

Securing and retaining top talent is a major challenge, not only for L&G Re, but for every Bermuda re/insurer. Many startups have set up on the Island and some businesses are writing more business in Bermuda, so there’s significant competition for the best people.

This is no bad thing as it proves Bermuda is doing the right things as a jurisdiction. It’s clear that the Bermuda Monetary Authority is an effective regulator, and the Bermuda Business Development Agency and others are doing great work in maintaining confidence in the Island.

Bermuda has the world-leading expertise of a premier insurance centre. If we want to work alongside the best companies and draw from an impressive pool of talent, then this is the place to be. While competition for talent is high, and with only two weeks under my belt, I’m already certain that we form an attractive team and workplace to be a part of.

We have five new hires starting this summer, including two Bermudians and, as I begin to fine-tune our direction, I’m looking forward to shaping the team.

How significant is it to have another woman taking the top job at a Bermuda reinsurer?

It’s certainly a good thing. There is no reason why women should not lead companies and in insurance, women are under-represented in management teams—it’s an industry-wide problem. We need to do everything we can to encourage women to pursue these positions. However, I’m already impressed by how the culture of Bermuda business seems geared towards achieving gender equity, and the strides that have been made.

While only six of more than 40 BILTIR member companies have female chief executives, the board chair is a woman and there’s a very strong contingent of women in the industry who are running leadership programmes and offering mentoring.

I intend to get involved in organisations which are committed to empowering women and other groups who have been traditionally excluded. I’m also greatly looking forward to meeting the many women in Bermuda whose achievements have made a significant impact and are paving the way.

Do you have any advice for other women hoping to reach the highest positions in the industry?

Believe in yourself: that’s number one. Don’t be your own limiting factor. Building relationships is essential. Make sure people know who you are. Women seem more likely to experience imposter syndrome than men, and when you’re outnumbered it’s easy to fall into that way of thinking.

It’s helpful to have mentors: a supporter who can help you believe in yourself, a cheerleader who can pick you up when your confidence takes a hit, someone you can trust to give you a pep talk when you need it. I’ve benefited from several mentors in my career and, from what I’ve heard so far, the businesswomen of Bermuda have a ‘lift while you climb’ mentality.

A mentor doesn’t have to be a woman: in his last year as CEO, Thomas promoted over a third of our women to new roles, proving that progress is best supported by a company culture of encouragement and empowerment.

Image: Shutterstock.com/SONALI CHAKRAVARTY

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