Bob Kimmel the CEO of K2 insurance services came on my radar and that of most other London-based insurance folk when last year his US-based MGA group picked up the remnants of what had been the Pioneer group of MGAs to form K2 International.
K2 owns a major collection of MGAs in the US, writes over a billion dollars in premium and is highly acquisitive both of talent, new agencies and other ancillary insurance businesses
I didn’t know Bob personally and researching K2 ahead of our London meeting I suppose I came into this podcast with lots of preconceptions about what the CEO of such a fast-growing and aggressively expansive US-headquartered group would be like.
I was completely wrong.
Bob is clearly very ambitious for K2 but he is also very easygoing and charming as well as being disarming about how steep the learning curve has been for him, a former reinsurance broker, moving much closer to the end insurance customer in the decade since K2’s formation.
New MGA start-ups and acquisitions, a potential Lloyd’s syndicate in the offing and a conscious hunt for talent in specific classes – Bob’s in-tray is absolutely overflowing and in this interview he discusses all aspects of MGA management in a disarmingly open way.
I really enjoyed my time with Bob and I think you will too.
LINKS
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo - enabling an enterprise view of exposure:
https://www.advantagego.com/
We also thank Claims Direct Access (CDA) and Free Partners for their support today:
https://www.claimsdirectaccess.com/
https://freepartners.com/
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Ep 89 Jeff Radke CEO Accelerant Holdings: Searching for gems & avoiding landmines
Ep 88 Monica Cramer Manhem, President, International Reinsurance SiriusPoint: Using all the tools in the box
Special Episode: The Future of Underwriting with James Slaughter and Silvi Wompa Sinclair
Ep 87 Rod Fox & Rob Bredahl of TigerRisk: Don’t stop me now
Ep 86 Philip Smaje and Marcel Chad of Piiq Risk Partners: Specialty risks need specialty brokers
EP 85 Clive Washbourn CEO Navium: The market is always good
Ep 84 Keith Harrison International CEO Lockton Re: Going head to head with the bigger brokers
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Ep 83 The $60bn broker: Olga Collins CEO Worldwide Broker Network (WBN)
Special Episode: The Power of Purpose with Steve Hearn CEO of Corant Global and Delta V Partners
Ep 82 David Bearman CEO Aventum: Don’t walk into a crowded room
Ep 81 Ash Bathia CEO Probitas 1492: Driving your own destiny
Ep 80 Matthew Shaw CUO of TMK: The most submissions for a decade
Ep 79 Neil Eckert and Trevor Carvey of Conduit Re: Big enough to be impactful but small enough to be nimble
Ep 78 Steve McGill: Building Excitement and Scale
Ep 77 Stephen Catlin & Paul Brand Convex: Being ready ahead of the market
EP 76 Keith Wolfe President Swiss Re P&C US: A complete view of the world's biggest market
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