The new guard

There is no denying the progress the Bermuda re/insurance industry has made in promoting more women to senior positions. There is an increasing number of female chief executives and chief financial officers (CFOs) running re/insurance companies, and although there is much further to go before women could be said to have achieved parity with men in terms of numbers in senior roles in the industry, there is certainly a sense that things are heading in the right direction.

One of those senior female executives is Liz Breeze, who serves as CFO at Hiscox Re & ILS, a role she has held since July 2018. Breeze is happy with the progress the industry has made, but she is keen to stress that gender is just one part of a broader issue around diversity. It is great to have more women on boards and in other senior executive positions, she says, but it has to be backed up with progress in other areas.

The ultimate goal, she explains, is to have a range of different backgrounds represented in the most senior positions, including men and women but also people of different racial, cultural, educational and career backgrounds.

A question of fairness

“It is important for all parts of society to be recognised. The focus is not, and should not be, on gender alone,” Breeze says. “It is about reflecting all different parts of society, and women are only one part of that.”

In one sense it is a question of fairness, she says, but more than that, it is about the morale and motivation of the workforce. “It is about giving women the belief that things can happen for them in their own careers, showing people in junior positions that there is a path forward and that there are no systemic barriers blocking their progress,” says Breeze.

Hiscox Group is in a strong position in this respect. The positions of Kathleen Reardon, chief executive officer (CEO) at Hiscox Re & ILS in Bermuda, Kate Markham as CEO of Hiscox London Market, and Breeze herself, are evidence for women that the most senior positions at the company are attainable.

In Bermuda more generally, Breeze says, the push for increased diversity has gained significant momentum, even if there is plenty more still to do. Hiscox Re & ILS can be proud of its own female CEO, but such figures aren’t as common as they need to be, says Breeze. “There are a lot of talented senior female actuaries and underwriters. It feels like we are on the cusp of a breakthrough, but we aren’t quite there yet,” she says.

Breeze admits the industry has been grappling with the issue of gender diversity for a long time—more than 20 years. In that time there has been a lot of thought and discussion about this topic.

“It has been slow progress but we are now getting to the point where we are seeing female CEOs and CFOs, and women in other senior positions,” she says.

“It is increasingly clear which organisations are leading in this area, and doing the right things, and which are being left behind. I believe this difference will increasingly show up in terms of the relative performances of these two groups.”

Breeze argues that companies should offer more transparency about what they are doing to increase diversity in their organisations. As a public company, Hiscox has to publish pay gap statistics, which has helped reduce gender pay discrepancies, and she believes other companies should follow suit.

This will allow women—and people from other groups—to make more informed choices when looking to join a new company. In turn, this will increase pressure on the companies where such discrepancies remain highest, if they want to attract the best talent.

Taking advice

Breeze started her career at KPMG in London in 2001 as a graduate trainee, moving to Bermuda as a manager in 2006. She remained with KPMG until 2012, when she joined Hiscox as head of finance for the UK retail business, before moving back to Bermuda to be CFO of Hiscox Re & ILS in 2018.

“KPMG was very good at encouraging people from different parts of society to join the organisation and giving them opportunities to build their careers,” recalls Breeze. “The key for me was listening to the advice of more senior colleagues and mentors, many of whom were men, given they had many of the senior positions back then.

“I was lucky in terms of the organisation I worked for and the people who were willing to advise me. Being willing to listen to advice definitely helped me get where I am today.”

Breeze emphasises the importance of being clear about what success looks like for each person individually, as they chart out their career goals. “There is no point in looking at other peoples' goals, you have to think about your own, and dare to dream big,” she says.

“The most important thing in achieving career success is knowing what you want—that makes it much easier to find a way to get there. When I saw a crack in the door of opportunity I wedged my foot in there. There is no point in being passive—you have to be proactive, you have to seize opportunities when you are ready for them.”

Breeze has served as an executive sponsor of the Women at Hiscox network (WaH) and is executive sponsor of the diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy at Hiscox Re & ILS. WaH recognised that women often have smaller networks, and that being well connected with other employees makes people more effective at getting things done.

It seeks to expand networks for women and create a connected community where participants can build up their contacts within the business. WaH also makes a point of including men in this process, who can benefit from the network’s guidance about how best to support women’s careers.

Breeze says: “I am conscious that I have benefited from advice and from having advocates in my career and it is important to me to give that back. It is also important for people to understand this is not a responsibility that comes when you reach senior positions at a company—it is something we should be doing all the way through our careers.

“We should all be mentoring and coaching and instilling confidence in our colleagues.”

More work to do on racial diversity

Although the broader international reinsurance industry is still dominated by men, Breeze argues that the industry can take some satisfaction from the progress it has made in promoting gender diversity. However, this has exposed the amount of work that remains to be done to promote racial diversity.

Individual companies and industry groups have been developing various initiatives to encourage young people from minority backgrounds to come into the industry, and to ensure they have opportunities to progress once they do.

“There is no point in being passive—you have to be proactive, you have to seize opportunities.”

Hiscox Re & ILS’s D&I strategy dates back to the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. “It started as a listening exercise, and it quickly became clear that we, as an industry, were not doing enough to promote racial diversity,” she says. “So we want to take actions to tackle these issues.

“We invited Leroy Nunery, author of the December 2018 study ‘The Journey of African-American Insurance Professionals’ to support us develop our D&I plans, to accelerate our progress and challenge management in our thinking.

“He and his team have helped us review different processes within our organisation and also recommended initiatives such as ‘reverse mentoring’, encouraging senior staff to learn more about how it feels to be a minority within the organisation, and to better understand the challenges they face.

“Across the group at Hiscox, we are committed to finding the best talent for every role, regardless of race or gender and have diverse representation across our boards and senior management teams,” Breeze says.

Healthy demand for ILS

Breeze is upbeat about the prospects of the industry more broadly.

“Rate increases have been acceptable but we need to see more going forward. There are many opportunities for the reinsurance industry, with North America experiencing record temperatures again, and more wildfires. Catastrophes seem to be coming with increasing frequency and intensity, which means there is a huge demand for our products.”

Demand continues to look healthy for insurance-linked securities (ILS), as investors become increasingly familiar with the product, says Breeze.

“Investors now have an increasing amount of data about ILS and they have seen the resilience of different structures, so they can make more informed choices about making investments,” she says. “For that reason we are seeing an increasing flight to quality, which I think will continue.”

She points to growth opportunities for the ILS sector in the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) space.

“Investors are putting providers under mounting pressure to get ESG into our products, which is increasing the focus of the industry on this area. It means making sure that the people who benefit from the insurance coverage that ILS provides are those who need it most, people who have had their homes washed away in a flood, for example.”

Increased interest from ESG investors can help bring more capital into the asset class, and thereby increase capacity in the market and help close the protection gap.

“ILS is one of the keys to closing the protection gap but it cannot do it alone,” says Breeze. “We need more from brokers, insurers, and every other part of the insurance value chain, all working together.”

She singles out trapped collateral as a key issue for the ILS sector, one that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and by losses related to catastrophes such as typhoons in Japan.

“Having a solution to the trapped collateral problem is vital. Hiscox Re & ILS is in a good position in that our platform does mitigate this issue for investors,” she concludes.

Liz Breeze is chief financial officer of Hiscox Re & ILS.