When Peter Horrobin and Tim Usher Jones started their managing general agency (MGA) Banyan Risk two years ago, the directors and officers (D&O) liability market was booming.

Things have changed since then with a drop in pricing and activity, but Horrobin remains confident about the MGA’s prospects.

In a video interview with Bermuda:Re+ILS, he says: “I have been in Bermuda for the last decade. The market had come up dramatically since the lows of 2017 and there was a massive need for more capital in the market.

“Tim and I had expertise in the market, and it was the perfect time to be doing it, particularly as Banyan focuses on very niche areas of the market.

“We have always based our business predicated on the bottom of the cycle.”

“We focus on lower down primary markets of areas such as special purpose acquisition companies, initial public offerings, and life science. It was the perfect time to come into the market. Things have changed but we continue to find a lot of excellent areas to play in the market.”

Agreeing that the D&O market remains turbulent, he adds: “We expect the activity to come back up as it does in every economic cycle, so we are not losing much sleep over it.

“More importantly, we have always based our business predicated on the bottom of the cycle. We have staffed appropriately, and we’ve spent a huge amount of time on our tech stack and some of the analytics we are doing when it comes to our pricing and modelling that will allow us to weather any cycle of the market.”