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Hello, and welcome to beyond the Desk, the podcast where I take a deep dive into the careers of some of the most influential and inspiring leaders in the technology transformation and operations space within global insurance and insuretech.

I'm your host, Mark Thomas, and every week I'll be sitting down with industry trailblazers who are driving innovation and modernization with within the insurance sector.

We'll explore their personal journeys, from their early backgrounds and the pivotal moments that shape their careers to the challenges they've had to overcome, the lessons they've learned along the way, and of course, the big wins that have defined their professional journey so far.

But it's not just about their successes.

It's about what you and I can take away from their experiences and the advice they have.

For anyone wanting to follow in similar footsteps.

Whether you're just starting out or looking.

To level up your career in the insurance or insuretech world, this podcast is packed with valuable insights and inspiration.

So grab your headphones, get comfortable, and let's jump into beyond the Desk.

Paul, welcome to the podcast.

How you doing?

Very well, thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Absolute pleasure.

I know we've been trying, I feel like we've been trying to get this since I was doing the old podcast, so it's been a while.

But look, I like to start all the same way.

So we're going to go right back to the start of your career, but do you want to give a quick intro to yourself, kind of who you are, what you're doing at the moment and then we'll go back and go from there?

Sure.

So, yeah, I'm Paul Butler.

I'm the CTO for the reinsurance and ILS business at Hiscox.

Only just started that role, so prior to that I was 5 years CTO for the London Market Business Unit.

But yeah, was looking for a freshman fresh change.

So new to new role, learning a lot and yeah, that's me.

Good stuff.

So let's go right back to the start.

So, so talk me through what, what life looked like when you first got into technology.

Was it, was it something you're into when you were young and, and kind of school, university, that kind of thing?

Yeah, I think I was always into, into tech.

I, as a kid, you know, I grew up in the, I'm quite old now.

I was born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s when, you know, computers were coming out in the home.

My first computer was a ZX Spectrum 48K and I actually got a clone version this Christmas.

Nice but yeah, I started writing code on that when I was what, 13, 14 years old, basic code built little games and yeah, just had a natural sort of interest in it.

I then did a degree which was a jack of all trades degree, it was like a business degree.

So clearly as a young man I had no idea really what I wanted to do.

But we had modules in that degree that around computer science and, and I was naturally more curious and interested in those and when I did a placement year it was all about tech and I just sort of from that point on got into it.

So.

Yeah, so did you, what did you study?

Did you, you did university, what did you, what did you study there?

It was business studies.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

So, so it wasn't, it wasn't a computer science degree?

No, we had one module which is sort of IT systems and there was a bit of coding and stuff but it was really when it was a four year course of a year in industry placement.

Yeah, which I did at Barclays and that was the first time I really experienced writing code and, and sort of working alongside some engineers and just, I think my brain's just suited to logical thinking patterns, that sort of stuff.

So I just, I just thrived in that sort of area.

So what did first?

Because obviously you, you weren't in insurance, you've only been insurance for kind of five years or so since the Hiscox is the only insurance company you've worked for.

So yeah, talk us through what the, what the early years look like post university, what type of roles you were doing and, and what that kind of evolution looked like.

So once I finished my placement I went back, did my final year, got my degree and then I don't know, I didn't think banking suited me so I said I don't want to work in banking.

And actually I was really into graphic design at the time.

I got a Mac with a scanner and a QuarkXPress and all that stuff and I thought, you know, I could be a graphic designer because I was competing with people who were, you know, had actually done that as a degree and were probably quite talented, unlike myself.

So I remember about six months after sort of doing temporary type jobs I called up my own, my old boss at Barclays and he said, oh, we'd love to have you back and got me on the graduate program there.

So I sort of, I just thought it's probably better to get back into banking than, you know, not get a job I'm not clearly qualified for in graphic design.

And yeah, so that's how it started.

I got into Barclays, I was there about 13 years, worked for five different businesses.

So I was moving every two or three years into another business unit and it was all tech.

So I was writing code, building solutions, getting into software engineering, data engineering, a bit of an architect.

So the whole shebang really across five business units.

So you did 13 years at Barclays.

What did the next move look like there and what level are you at this point when you move?

So I'm sort of a tech lead at this point, running development teams, building in house solutions.

My last gig was at Barclays wealth prior to that, stockbrokers.

And it was really that we, we'd had my first child, Felix and my wife decided she wanted to be as, you know, work a full time mother.

Yeah.

And she used to out earn me.

She was like amazing at public relations.

A director.

Wow.

Okay, so there was a bit of a, like, okay, so that's.

Our income's more than half what it used to be.

So the choice I had really was to, to go into contracting.

Right.

You know, I'd worked with contractors all my career and they were always earning double what I earned and paying hardly any tax back in those days.

Various reasons.

So yeah, I went into contracting and yeah, that's sort of, I think actually the catalyst of how I then sort of my career progressed rapidly at that point.

Yeah, I was able to take, you know, 13 years of everything I'd learned in banking and tech and then sort of apply that to a sort of contract and then startup role that I joined to startup.

So.

Right, yeah.

So, so, so at that point what were you, were you doing different types of roles while you were contracting?

Was it still kind of technical, technical leadership architecture stuff or kind of the.

First one I took was it was for a startup.

Yeah.

And five roles in one type thing.

Yeah.

So I was the tech department of one person and it was, I was employee number 10.

Right.

We were based out of an office space just, just off Borough market.

So I think I put on a stone also that year because the food was amazing and just it'd be wafting in at lunchtime and you just go into the market and.

Amazing.

Yeah, so yeah, it wasn't too healthy, but that, that business just sort of grew rapidly and, and the CEO wanted me to join permanently.

So I only contracted there for six months.

Then I joined as their permanent cio.

Right.

And over I was there about six and a half years and we grew the business I think from 10 people to 350 when I left there were 250 in London, 100 and also in Sydney and Australia and we were making millions in profit.

So it was, it was quite a successful startup.

What was that business doing?

It was a business to business sort of switching service so called make it cheaper.

It's now called Bionic.

We back then were white labeling for all the sort of switches you would know, like confused.com money supermarket, go compare you switch.

They didn't want to do business to business energy or gas or electric switching because it's very complicated.

There's lots of rules of what tariffs are available to what customers.

So although these businesses were good at doing the domestic market, that it was just too complicated.

Right.

So we white labeled four of them.

That's pretty much how we grew.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And then we, we expanded into more products, you know, all the things that small medium sized businesses could save money on.

So we went into business insurance, merchant services, broadband, all that sort of stuff.

So pretty much everything you might need as a business.

And the intention was to save every business thousands of pounds a year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What was that?

Because that's, that's an interesting one because obviously you've gone from working at Barclays, one of the biggest companies in the UK to obviously a 10 person business.

What was that switch like?

That must have been a bit of a kind of a change.

It was massive.

I mean, you know, I was able to apply some of the expertise that I gained at Barclays in terms of how to build good systems and all the fundamentals in terms of making sure those systems were safe and secure and managing risk and stuff.

Because you know, when we were doing like business insurance, we, we had to apply by the, the regulatory body and that sort of stuff.

So that all helped.

But it was just, if I describe it to begin with, it was like chaos.

Yeah.

You know we're trying so much.

We, we grew the business on cash, we had no outs outside investment.

Right.

But the pace, it was, the pace, you know, so being in Barclays you'd be on like 2 to 3 year multi million pound projects and they were pretty successful.

And they, you know, were very defined phases from requirements to build to testing to, you know, these things would take months and months and the whole thing would take years.

But in a startup, you know, you had to sort of accelerate that down into not months, but days.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And it was, you know, it was, it's hard, hard work.

You're working long, long hours.

But it's exciting.

Yeah.

And you feel like you're part of a family and you feel like you've got a stake in that business.

And yeah, as you say, you're wearing so many different hats and doing so many different roles.

So one minute you're writing some code, next minute you're helping someone with a problem with their phone system.

Yeah, you know, it's, it's anything goes.

So yeah, it's really enjoyable.

So what made you leave there after kind of.

So you obviously got to kind of 350 people.

That was obviously quite a journey.

I suspect over, over six, six years or so.

So what, what made you move on from that role?

Looking back and we might talk about this later, I think I was getting close to burnout.

Right.

That the pace was relentless for many, many years and that's not sustainable.

I didn't realize at the time you just don't.

You just keep going and keep going.

But I think what it was was that we had a seven year plan.

The intention was the, you know, we were going to go for exit after seven years and we were getting close to that seven year point.

Right.

And we had some offers but they weren't quite what the, the CEO wanted.

He had a figure in his, in his, in his mind that he wanted to achieve.

Yeah.

So he basically said we're going for another five years.

Right.

And it's like, I don't know, you know, if you're doing press ups or something and you, you know, it's the last two that are really.

Yeah, yeah.

You're on the home street and I.

Just felt another five years.

I don't know.

I can do that.

Yeah.

We were building up to that seven year point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think I, you know.

Yeah.

It's funny, I've been I' in exactly a similar situation a long time ago.

When you've got your heart set on a target and then suddenly that target moves by a couple of years, it's just, it's quite deflating, isn't it?

Especially if you've kind of almost got your head that that's like, that's, you get to.

And then I'm going to do something different.

Yeah.

It's quite easy to get through that.

That last kind of home straight.

Yes.

But when the home straight turns into kind of a couple more laps, it's, it's not, it's not quite as, it's quite as motivating, is it?

So.

Yeah.

And I think I, looking back Now, I did 100 the right thing for, for my sort of health and yeah, it was just, you know, I, I Negotiated a good out with, with the business.

Did you have equity in that business then?

Yeah.

And, and they saw me right when, when they eventually sold it five years later.

Right.

So they.

Oh they did actually get to where they wanted to in five years.

And you know, I'm, I'm great friends with the, the guy who ran the business and you know, he's done, done brilliantly.

He's now an angel investor and doing really exciting things.

We're still great friends.

I was at his 55th wedding.

Not wedding, his 55th birthday a couple of weeks back.

You know, so yeah, we all came about.

It all worked out really well in the end.

But I think you just don't realize sometimes, you know, I think first, first four or five years, fine, but it's just when you're growing at that pace and everything's based on the technology, the success of the business is professional tech.

You know, it was all about, you know, being able to trade electronically with these, these partners of ours, you know, using APIs.

And so that stuff had to be built that there was a big call center and we had to feed that call center with data.

So they were, you know, cold calling the right sort of prospects.

Um, so that was also on me to, to make sure that we got the systems, ingesting that data, pushing it out to the sales team and then building systems that would integrate with the phone systems as well.

Right.

You know, back then we were looking at, you know, we needed a good CRM system and we looked at things like Salesforce.

But back then Salesforce didn't have Force.com or anything, so you just had to use it out of the box.

And we had all this complexity that we couldn't do that.

So we had to build our own.

Right.

So it was, everything was tech, you know, marketing, digital marketing, the infrastructure, the ability to interact with phone systems and record every single call and, and, and then trade with not only our white labeled partners, but all the sort of the big suppliers like you know, the energy, big six energy suppliers and all that.

So you had to, not only had to build the tech but I guess grow the team, built, hire the people.

You kind of.

I get, I guess that's where, which.

Isn'T easy when, when you're especially the, you know, the beginning of a startup, it's quite hard to attract people, you know, because they're getting offers with big names and much better benefits package, all that kind of stuff.

You really have to sort of sell the whole, the whole thing.

So yeah, I mean the team was Pretty big when I left, you know we had, it was certainly not a one man tech team.

When would you, would you class?

Because obviously I, I, we kind of COVID the rest of your career now.

But I just, that, that seems to me like that's so you, you've gone from big company, lots of structure, lots of different businesses in there so you kind of broaden your experience a little bit.

But I imagine that that role is where you probably learn the most about kind of what one, lots of different areas of, of, of how a business runs but sorry, how tech works but how a business runs as well because in Barclays is like you're not, you're not that close to the business.

Right.

Like you do kind of quite siloed in what you're doing but also you probably learned quite a bit about yourself and how to lead and mistakes and all that kind of stuff.

Like would you say that that was the kind of key role in setting you up for what you've gone on to do?

Kind of from a leadership perspective?

I think I learned so much.

It was a massive acceleration for me, you know, getting out of that sort of comfy world of just you know, running dev teams, building code, but to actually being part of how we're going to grow this business and make a success of this.

Yeah.

Feeling the real, you know, that tech's the major part of that success was going to be.

So you know, the way that I sort of structured things, the methodologies we introduced to remove some of the chaos and feel like we had a bit more control, like introducing agile methodologies that you know, we would never have even gone near in banking back then and yeah, how you attract the right people and you quickly know what good looks like and actually that's the key piece is having the right people and that's the most important thing.

Yeah.

So being very, very strict on who you bring in, who you hire.

So yeah, no, it taught me, taught me so much.

It really sort of, you know, because I went in there as a contractor to write some code to build them.

Yeah.

For 12 months or something.

Yeah.

And then the next minute I'm running the whole team and I'm on the leadership team.

You know, it's me and the two, there were two CEOs, one to begin with, then another one was brought in and the three of us were the sort of senior leadership team running and growing that business.

So yeah, yeah, tech definitely had a place at the table there and for a good reason.

So because I think that's, that's Quite you said there about hiring people and it being the key thing because I think that that's, that's important in any business.

I think that like you kind of only as good as you.

But when you're, when you've maybe only especially at the start when you're only can maybe they give you budget to maybe hire two or three.

It's, it's like.

And that's 10, 20% of.

Of the total workforce.

Suddenly I imagine it's way more in the.

In.

In the spotlight and to get serious bang for your buck in getting someone for probably that's way better than the.

The kind of the what you're prepared to pay them.

So how did you go about doing that?

Like was like.

Because, because that I.

Figuring out who.

I mean I'm kind of in that situation right now.

Right.

Who do you.

Who do you hire?

And they're way more in the spotlight because you've got limited cash.

Right.

You know, you're not going to get the best technical people.

Yeah.

So what you're looking at more is, is you know, attitudes and you know, got the right behaviors.

Are they going to be someone who really wants to, you know, be part of the journey and have sort of have that energy and that natural curiosity and.

And just wanting to move things at a pace.

So you're really looking for the characters that are going to do that sort of.

And then the tech bit, you know, is important but in that sort of environment it's more about the actual who they are.

Yeah.

What energy are they going to bring?

Yeah, so, yeah, it's.

It's slightly different.

I mean my, you know, as always with hiring, I didn't hire everyone that, you know, they, they come back out perfectly.

Yeah, yeah, there was some, there were some that didn't sort of cut it, but yeah, mostly we hired good people.

Yeah, I think, yeah, it's.

It's just.

It's just difficult when you're starting out because you haven't got that brand and you know, there's competition.

Right.

So it's also down to selling, you know, what it's going to be like to work with you and sort of creating the, you know, so when quite often I felt like I was selling the job, not, not the candidate, you know, selling themselves to me.

And you know, I wanted to really give them a lot of information about, you know, the business, what we're looking to do, what we're looking to achieve and why it's going to be exciting working here.

And yeah, so it was more me Selling.

Yeah, yeah, well I mean that's what they say, isn't it?

Like the most important thing is when you make a decision about who, where you're going to work is who you work for rather than the, the company.

But so, so let's fast forward that then until.

So you left there.

Is that when you went to.

Yeah.

So a similar thing happened so I, I thought, you know, I need some time out.

I actually took a whole summer off which was right, lovely and refreshing and, and then I thought well, I need to go back to contracting.

You know I've always kept quite hands on so I've done the full sort of stack stuff but I've always had a leaning towards more the data engineering, data architecture type stuff.

So I thought I'd just brush up my CV and go out contracting as a data engineer or a data architect.

And.

Yeah, almost about a week after putting my CV out I got a contract, a company called GfK.

A big sort of data and tech company.

Yeah.

And at the time their offices were based like a 25 minute drive from home.

So that was nice not to be commuting into London every day and just get in.

My car had a parking space right by the office.

It was like, oh, this is a nice experience in terms of commuting.

Yeah.

And that was a contract as well which after six months they asked me to join as the CTO for that business and that became another permanent role.

So my two attempts of contracting have both turned into cto, cio, CTO roles.

But maybe that's the way forward.

That's the lesson to learn from it.

Yeah, but, and so what was that, what was the kind of.

I know a little bit about that business but tell a little bit about what that role looked like and the kind of.

Because I guess that's a much bigger business at this point, isn't it?

But, but not a massive business.

No.

So I think when I joined, I think GFK is probably about 12,000 people.

Okay.

Quite pretty.

And we had offices in about 120 countries.

It's bigger than I thought it was.

I think they KKR went in and it's smaller now.

Right.

But, but back then it was, it was reasonably big.

We had basically relationships with lots of retailers sending the sort of goods you'd buy every one or two years.

So those sort of consumer goods like phones, tablets, laptops, fridge freezers, you know, that sort of consumer durable product.

And we had about half a million retailers across those 120 countries giving them, giving us their sellout data.

Yeah.

So what products they were selling, for what price and all that sort of stuff.

So we'd ingest all of that information and then we'd enhance it and, and go down to all the sorts of details, you know, so if they're like we're looking at handset market, we'd be able to go down to what features are driving the demand.

And even for business I worked with, we were going down to component level.

So we had like, we had a partnership with a company in the US that did litigation and they had the specialist equipment that would X ray components and tell you exactly what was in a phone or a tablet.

And we'd be able to basically, you know, take what was being sold and extrapolate that down to a component level and then we could sell that information back to supply chain vendors.

And mostly our customers were hedge funds and equity type clients.

So wanting to know, you know, which, which firms are competing the best in the different marketplaces and where they should take positions in the market.

Yeah, so that was still very, very data led at that point.

Like data is the core of everything you, you were doing.

Yeah, we were data products.

I mean, by the time we left, I left, we were, we were selling pure data products to quants.

Yeah, Quant, hedge fund, hedge funds.

So.

And basically it was, it was beautiful because you've got the data anyway, so you just monetizing it.

Yeah, Stuff that sat in your database, you had to package it up and deliver it in a very strict and way and had to be super trustworthy.

So yeah, that was very much a data company and data products and research around it as well.

Yeah.

And then, so that leads you to the first role, Hiscock.

So talk to, talk through a little bit about that.

And you called me, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I called you and persuaded you to go to Hiscox.

But, but, yeah, but other than me, what, what made you want to join Hiscocks?

Yeah, I think again, you know, I was, I don't know, I always like moving around different sectors.

Although, you know, I've only been in, you know, three companies up until this point.

They've all been very different in different ways.

So I was, I was curious about insurance.

I thought there must be something good about it because all I'm hearing is it's really outdated and the systems and the tech and all that's really old fashioned.

And I thought, well, that's, that feels like a something that, you know, a good challenge where, you know, well, how can I fast forward them and bring them into a more sort of modern era.

And so it's more exciting for me to join something where I can make a difference to, you know, going into a company that's already running things in a slick way and you know, got a great team and you know, it's like, okay, I'm just the, the guardian to keep it, keep it going.

I'd much rather go into a business where I can see how I can add value.

Yeah.

So that's sort of what attracted me to, to Hiscox was that that sort of the scope and the breadth of what I could do and also, you know, the people I met, you know, so Paul Lawrence, Chief Underwriting Officer, Adam Rushing, who's a great, great friend of mine, now Chief Operating Officer.

Really, really nice people.

And Ian Penny, back in the day he was the, the group cio.

Yeah.

So he was very good at convincing me as well.

Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, yeah, I took the, I took the, the role and yeah, it was amazing, you know, five years ago when I started.

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Now let's get back to today's episode.

What was the kind of.

Obviously I know a little bit about it from the time, but I certainly remember Adam.

Adam's brief of kind of what he was looking for was, was, was, was definitely unusual for, because, because typically in a London market CTO role, if you went back through history at that point, I mean, I don't know what the exact numbers are, but 80, 90% if not more of the people they would have hired from another insurer.

Yeah.

Hiscox obviously had a definitive plan that they definitely didn't want to do that, but it'd be interesting to get into a little bit of kind of why they didn't want to do that.

And what you found when you, you started what the kind of the mission was and, and yeah.

And what it was like moving from, into insurance from, from outside of industry.

Yeah.

I mean it was just, it was just interesting.

When I, when I joined, I actually had a lunch with my leadership team at the time.

I think it was two months before I was officially joining.

Yeah, I remember.

Yeah.

And I came away from that thing.

Oh my God.

They were, they were also like, I don't know, they would just quite negative.

They just use the two hour session to complain to me about, you know, not being able to get anything done.

And it was just, it was like I said, okay, we got a problem here.

Yeah.

So, you know, I went away and actually thought, well, that's probably a good thing because I was after the challenge and I've definitely got one if that's my leadership team.

And the other thing that was curious was there was no one who was really techie on that leadership team.

They were all like project managers, senior project managers.

Right.

So I didn't feel like a tech team or a tech leadership team I'm used to.

So that was curious.

So yeah, when I turned up, I remember, I think my second week I bumped into the group CEO at the time, Bronic, and he said, I said, hi, I'm the new, I think we were head of, head of IT back.

Yeah.

Talk about that job title.

Yeah, that was, I said it would change.

Yeah.

And he said, you know, technology is, is slow and expensive.

And I thought, okay, yeah, that's what I'm sort of hearing from the tech team that they can't get anything done.

And so again, it wasn't, when I, when I sort of stripped it all back, it wasn't really the people so much, it was, it was the ways of working.

Yeah.

Kind of culture.

Yeah.

And we were, we were doing lots of projects.

So we bring a team together, do a project, build something.

And because that team was then going to get disbanded and put somewhere else, of course the people we were building the solutions for wanted to ask for every possible thing they could think.

Of course.

So yeah, you sort of had that sort of project mentality.

Start, stop, lots of admin.

So you know, the first thing I did said we got to Start thinking about product, product management, you know, long lived products and services.

So the tech team, we've got all these products and services and capabilities that we provide for the business and we need to start really sort of investing in these things in the long term.

They're not projects, they're not one off things.

Let's keep investing in them, continually improving them up until a point where we don't need them anymore and we just switch them off.

And we want teams that are looking after these products who have all the skills that they need so they haven't got dependencies on other teams and they've got full autonomy.

So it was really about, you know, changing the mindset, changing the way we move towards products away from projects and then building that, the sort of the capabilities, making sure, you know, for this particular product we're going to need some data engineers, a data scientist, a software engineer, a DevOps person, you know, making sure that that team had all the different skills they needed without having to be dependent on anyone else.

Right.

And then really starting to accelerate our sort of growth in DevOps and maturity in DevOps as well.

Yeah.

So it's more product management, DevOps maturity, bringing in a load of capable people with the right skills and then empowering them to get stuff delivered.

So that's sort of to build it.

Out a lot more technology based people really.

Because I think that's the one thing from an external perspective that you did was, which was kind of.

There's a lot more in that team now.

There's a lot more engineers and people who are, who are techies rather than delivery people.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

A second product team.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean the team I inherited was just 45 people because most of it was, you know, using vendors and that sort of stuff.

And that was the other reason why things were going slow quite often because you're working with gnarly vendors who are quite frankly that there's not a lot of great insurance products out there.

That's one thing I've learned.

They will sell you that it's going to be perfect and work for you and they will claim it's going to take two years to implement, but that's really the case.

So what we've sort of discovered now is we're most likely going to be much more successful if we build it ourselves.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's going to be cheaper in the long term as well.

If we run it ourselves as well.

Yeah, yeah.

So we have bought stuff in the, in the five years I've been There, but we've ended up building our own user experience around it.

Yeah.

So an example is, you know, we built bought in a claim system because we needed the write back capability into Lloyds, but we're actually just using it as a write back system with a little bit of their workflow.

But we're building the claims underwriter user experience over the top of it.

Yeah, well I guess that also means that there's, there's.

You can create your own USP then as well, can't you?

Because then, then, then you, then there is a real differentiator to how products.

Work because it's built by you workbenches or whatever we call them, they've got to interact with all your systems.

Systems of record.

Right.

So you know, typically that, that single pane of glass that looks at everything's going to be integrating with maybe 14 to up to 18 different systems.

Now trying to do that integration with an off the shelf vendor based system is really hard and you, you typically end up having to spend a load of money with the vendor to make that happen.

Yeah.

And their day rates are not going to be cheap, so.

So I'd be really interested because lots of the people I interview have, I mean they don't all come from insurance, but lots of them have.

You've obviously not been spent more of your career out of insurance than you have in it.

Although it probably feels like you've been in insurance for quite a long time now.

And, and, and I know, I know you like it now, but what, what were the, what were the kind of two or three like big kind of eye openers, challenges, like kind of things that, that you, when you look back on it were the things that you, if someone was going to take that jump now.

Yeah.

That were kind of surprises to you or let's say that I think the.

First one was, you know, I was just used to working in a tech company so I said I want to spin up AWS and get some stuff done rapido.

Right.

And I was told in no uncertain terms that no, we only use Azure.

We're single cloud, you have to use Azure.

So that was a frustrating thing.

I think within my first month I just thought, yeah, let's just spin this stuff up.

But that being said, we are now using Google Cloud as well as Azure.

So I got there in the end.

I think the other two years.

The other thing was headcount is just a big issue, getting headcount.

So clearly I didn't really have a tech team when I joined.

I had A few.

Net developers and manual testers.

So, you know, I wanted to bring in data engineers, data scientists, DevOps engineers, all these sorts of people I would expect to see in a modern tech team.

So I had to create that somehow.

The way I went about it initially was just do staff Org.

So I'd worked with some niche or staff or partners before.

So I brought them in and I was able to bring in those sort of engineers and those skills without increasing the head.

The Hiscox headcount.

So that was another problem.

It's like trying to get headcount was.

So did that give you an opportunity to kind of prove what they could do and what you could get done?

And then actually it's like, well, look, we're doing this here, but it's costing.

Yeah, we do.

I was lucky that we had a couple of things we could really jump on.

The first was the, the data strategy was, you know, they, they just had a consultant come in and, and do the, you know, what the data strategy should be.

And I thought, well, I can execute this for you.

So I hired in a couple of people, some who used to work with me at GfK.

We had a small squad of data engineers and some DevOps and we spun up our cloud data platform rapidly.

We used what the consultants had come up with was like if you create this insight which was basically joining bordereau data premium, claims, risk data together for a particular line of business, you could save millions with the insights of that would give you.

So we focused in on that, that thin line, you know, so let's just focus on creating that insight.

Ingesting that border row from 80% of their cover holders that they work with and then delivering that insight, but at the same time getting 60% of our cloud data platform built out as well.

Yeah.

So small squad of good engineers, which probably cost us half a million.

And within six months we had the insights in the hands of the underwriters and they felt that those insights would give them add 4 to 11 million a year to their bottom line.

Wow.

So that was like, you know, this way, working with the right people, full autonomy, no dependencies, get things done quickly.

So everyone said, oh, okay.

And then we did a similar thing with our trading platform Hiscox plus, where I think the last product we built had just been launched when I joined and it had taken maybe three or four years to build and had run over budget and stuff and we were building the next product and you know, I said, well, can't we just launch the product without all this Stuff, you know, we just what do we need just to launch the product.

So again we put a small squad on it, hired in some better engineers and we delivered that in nine months and you know, hit all the outcomes that we wanted in terms of how much DWP we're going to trade.

We were hitting that.

So it was, you know what it demonstrated was we haven't built any sort of renewal capability at that point.

Yeah.

But we were able to launch the product without that because renewals weren't going to kick in for a year anyway.

So if we started seeing the revenue come in then we could carry on investing and building out that capability ahead of renewals.

So it's just doing it in a different way.

And since then we've re engineered that whole platform as well.

It's now cloud native, it's got active, active resilience and we're able to create new products in three months because we've made it, you know, into lots of reusable components.

Yeah.

So what's an interesting bit about that?

Just there's a couple of points I wanted to go into that.

So the bit that really resonates with me there is that every project you've spoken about there is that there's, there's doing some cool tech stuff but there's always a business outcome to that about kind of how much more we're spending 500k to, to make 4 to 11 million.

Yeah, exactly.

Which is a no brainer right now.

Now I can say it's a long lived team by the way and maybe we can double it but we're still better off than we were before we started.

Yeah, exactly.

So where do you.

Because, because I think, I mean that, that to me I think is, is often the, it's certainly a piece of feedback I get a lot.

Is that, that making that transition from, from the kind of the techie to a technology leader successfully.

You have to have one eye on the, on, on the businesses as well as the technology.

And it seems like obviously that that's how when you went in you analyzed like how, how can I get what I need to get at Hiscocks?

I need to take, to take some small projects, prove that they can make some, some get some like quick ish wins but, but have some genuine impact on, on bottom line.

And that gets people interested naturally.

So and that builds trust and faith.

Yeah.

And if you look at the, the team now it's three times the size that.

Yeah.

Because they've done that over and over again and now it's like.

Well, actually that's just what that.

And we've just spun up more value streams, more squads working in other areas because, you know, we've got that trust.

We're seeing the value getting delivered, you know, incrementally, you know, and that's the thing with product management.

It's all about value generation.

Right.

So.

Yeah.

And how do I chunk it up?

So I'm constantly delivering value, not spending three years building something, but every quarter I need to drop some form of value that people in the business can feel or sense or use.

Yeah.

Do you think that's a, do you think that's a really important part of, of kind of the evolution of like I say, the becoming.

Going from being a kind of a techie to a genuine technology leader?

Like.

Yeah, it's.

The commercial part is important.

It's understanding how tech can enable your business, empower your business, you know, and deliver more profit, more value.

It's.

Yeah, yeah.

I had the benefit of my last company where I used to go on sales trips and be actively selling data to.

Yeah.

Because it's, you mean, I imagine at Barclays there was probably less of that.

No, but, but certainly in a startup that would have been front and center of every conversation, I imagine.

And then, and then obviously you're selling data products rather than building stuff that's in house.

So is that where you kind of cut your teeth on that, that kind of stuff and learn that, that, that, that was, that's important.

I really felt the commercial side of it because I was on sales trips.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, okay.

So because they wanted to talk to someone techie.

Right.

If they're buying this product, you know, they wanted to know how we can ingest it, how it's going to be easy to consume and you know, what's the quality controls, like how do you do that?

So they wanted, they, they would bring their techie people into the meeting and you know, sense check that is a robust product.

Yeah.

Worth investing because they spend like over, you know, 2 million on something.

Yeah, exactly.

They wanted to know it was good quality.

Yeah, makes sense.

Yeah.

And I, I wanted to get kind of move on to chat a little bit about, we spoke about just before we started the kind of evolution of a, a CTO in, in insurance.

It's certainly a role that is becoming more prominent rather than just the kind of back office, the head of IT type mentality.

I'd love to get your, your opinion on kind of certainly in the London market reinsurance space, which has not necessarily been known so much for innovation and kind of build in tech and stuff like that as much as maybe it has in the, in the GI and the retail space.

What's your view of kind of how that's evolved in the time that you've been at Hiscox and where you see the roadmap of the next kind of few years or so?

Yeah, I mean I think it's evolved massively, very quickly.

You know, my experience, you know, as, as you said, I joined as a head of it.

We were on a different floor in the building, you know, certainly a peripheral team that was just there to take tickets and yeah, you know, we weren't seen as a value add enabler.

So that's changed.

The, the CTOs are now at the table in the leadership teams and, and you know, even in Lloyds we're starting to automate a lot more and the stuff like you know, with, with Google, you know, we partnered with them a couple of years ago.

We did a sort of three month proof of concept with them where we took a line of business, sabotage and terrorism and we said, can we automate it?

Yeah, you know, classic trading through Lloyds and we succeeded.

You know, and then it took about eight months to get it in production because if you're putting AI into production, you've got to make sure you got all the, the safe guard rails and the governance in place and all that sort of stuff.

Plus we wanted to properly integrate that proof of concept into our, our underwriter workbench and stuff like that.

So you know, I think people are waking up to this.

You know, I think Key Drive drove it with, with the auto follow stuff, the stuff we're doing with Google and we're continuing to build more capabilities and roll that across different lines.

It's starting to move quite rapidly.

I mean even if I think about When I joined five years ago, I think about 3% of our GWP was automatically being traded and I'd say it's getting closer to 20% now.

If you look at the sort of delegated authority book trading through Hiscox plus and the stuff that you know, we've switched on with Google, that's growing, you know, month on month more and more we're pushing through that we're able to tackle like mid market stuff that we wouldn't, we reject it back in the day because you know, it's not worth an underwriter's time to be going for that sort of low value stuff.

But if it's going through a machine with the humans still clearly, you know, having a final say in it.

So we've got them in the loop.

I want to make that clear.

We're not letting AI do this on their own, but moving from 3% to getting towards 20%, it's only going to go further and further and we've got all this sort of follow stuff happening.

Beta follow, alpha follow.

So it's definitely, Even if the Blueprint 2 stuff's going slowly, everyone else is starting to really ramp up and be faster.

So I think, you know, even in, in the traditional London market, every carrier, every broker needs to really bring in the right tech people.

Yeah.

With the right skills and know how to do that.

So yeah, it's exciting, it's an exciting time.

The underwriters are also seeing the benefits as well.

So I think there was this fear that, you know, if we started automatically trading we wouldn't have a job anymore.

But I think in, in London market, in Hiscott's, because the underwriters in like the property division with their API trading, they've still got a big part to play in terms of, you know, building relationships with COVID holders, helping the COVID holders with their portfolio management and our overall portfolio management and then sort of still tweaking the, the pricing algorithms to support the portfolio management side of things.

So they still got a very clear, important role to, to play.

It's just they can do a lot more now.

They can do 60,000 quotes a week.

Yeah.

Because the quotes are being handled by, by APIs.

So yeah, you know, we're seeing that evolution and I think people waking up like the underwriters are waking up like tech's not an evil thing, it's not a bad thing.

It's actually meaning I can do more business, I can make more money with, with having to have a huge team of 100 or so.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

And then, and then just before we get on some quick fire questions, but I'm always interested, interested like what, what would you say are the kind of two or three like kind of real pearls of wisdom you've picked up like, or bits of advice you would give to, to people who are, who are maybe thinking like, thinking of like kind of entering into insurance.

Because I like to say I think you've, you've taken that, that leap and now obviously enjoying it obviously see the, the, the, the, the kind of Runway in the insurance.

What, what would you say the kind of people who are aspiring CTOs looking at getting insurance.

What are the, a couple of bits of advice you would Give of kind of how to, how to make it and make it.

Make it, do it well.

Yeah.

I mean, for me, it's like there's so much to do.

Yeah.

There's so much that can be done.

That's an exciting space to be in.

I mean, I think there's other industries where it's marginal gains, maybe.

I don't know, with all this AI stuff.

Who knows?

But I think insurance, more than any other sector that I've come across, that there's so much scope of what we can do and how we can add value.

Yeah.

So it's exciting.

There's just so much opportunity for us to create value.

Yeah.

So that's why I would, you know, and I think we do need to attract more people from other sectors into insurance.

Yeah.

What about, what about kind of how to be a good CTO now or making the, the leap?

What do you think the differences of kind of going from architect, because you've obviously done engineer architecture into leader?

What, what, what.

I actually think that's quite important.

Important.

I think you need to have had a tech background to be.

Because then you know what good looks like.

So again, the most important thing you can do is hire the best possible people.

And to be able to do that, you need to know what good looks like.

Yeah, yeah, but I said it's, it's not just about their tech capabilities, but their behaviors and attitudes.

And, you know, I think if you get the people rights and then you empower those people and get the culture side right, then things tend to work out pretty well.

And yeah.

Shouldn't get so fixated on what tech we need to use and what the tech choices are.

It's more about the right people, the right ways of working.

Yeah.

And then stuff just happens, you know, stuff moves quickly.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the only thing I would say is there's still a lot of legacy problems for all of us to deal with.

And we are regulatory, regulated business.

So, you know, you, you've got to always think about that, you know, the risk side of things and being safe and making sure that we're not doing anything stupid.

And also how do we chip away at these legacy systems?

I think we've all, many of us, I've Talked to other CTOs have tried the big transformations, and they've never gone smoothly or well.

And they, you know, they go on for years and cost millions.

So, you know, is there another way we could start looking at the legacy problem?

Could we just sort of chip away at it gradually, you know, and Wake up one day and we've just got a teeny bit of legacy left.

Yeah.

Rather than trying to do it, you know, all big, all encompassing transformation that rarely works out well.

Yeah.

Right.

I've got some quick fire questions to fire at you.

First one is, which brand or company do you most admire and why?

I found this quite hard because I don't really admire any company, but I would say Guinness.

Okay.

Only because I was in Dublin the other weekend and I thought it's the best museum I've ever been to.

It's very good, isn't it?

Fourth backs and then beer at the top.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's.

It's a cool place.

But also their marketing has always been very clever.

I mean, if you take, you know, it's basically just a glass of stout.

Right.

But they're all over the world.

How the hell did they do that with.

Well, this isn't really my favorite beer.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

It is.

It's a very.

It's a really cool place, isn't it?

And like they actually, they have had some incredible marketing.

When you see it all in one place, it makes you remind you how many iconic adverts and stuff they've done.

And the way they treated their people again.

Yeah.

You know, because it's a bit like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, isn't it, where this whole community and they provided schooling and doctors and dentists.

Yeah.

So good.

That's a great one.

If you could swap jobs with one person for a day, who would it be?

Maybe Lewis Hamilton or something.

Are you big into.

Are you into Grand Prix and all.

That kind of stuff?

Yeah, I really enjoy watching it now.

Yeah.

I think since that Netflix series.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Great.

The next one is.

What moment in your career are you most proud of and why?

I think what I've achieved at Hiscox and becoming a partner after being there a couple of years, the recognition that I got for.

For turning around a team and building probably the strongest team.

Yes.

I'm really proud of that.

I think it's a combination of all the lessons I've learned and all the things that didn't go so well in the previous years and previous roles.

So, yeah, it's nice to see I've learned all those lessons and I sort of know how to do it now.

Say that.

Yeah.

And then they get given.

Yeah.

Figure that one out.

Yeah.

It's never the same.

Right.

Best business, kind of.

Or fixed non fiction related book you've.

You ever read.

Are you a big Reader I used.

To be until the iPhone came out.

Yeah, just medium.com and Apple News.

But I do like business books.

I'm not a big fan of.

I think you learn more through doing.

But there is one.

I'll give it a shout out.

Sooner Safer, Happier by Jonathan Smart.

Yeah.

There's a lot of clever stuff in there.

Okay, what's it about?

Ways of working.

Right.

Anti patterns to avoid.

Okay.

Yeah.

Just how you get engineers into the flow.

Basically how you get them to be really productive and get friction out of their way.

So it's.

Yeah, it's.

I think a term that people will latch onto a little bit more is as agile becomes a thing of the past.

I think it's more about flow engineering going forward.

How do we get people just to work in the most productive way?

Because if people are getting stuff done, that's when they're happiest and they're most engaged.

So I think things around developer experience, flow engineering and the books, a lot about that actually.

Right.

So is it geared towards like technology leaders?

Is that.

Yeah.

And change.

Change leaders.

Yeah.

Okay, interesting.

If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about insurance, what would it be?

Embrace all cloud vendors, Google and AWS especially.

I think, you know, this is my personal experience.

I think, you know, it's always easy to go with the other one, isn't it?

Yeah.

Might not be the best vendor.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think what you find with some of these other vendors is they've got really good engineering practices and they really lean in.

So like working with Google that we're working side by side with highly technical people that are just leapfrogging us in terms of.

Why do you think there is a reluctance to do.

Is it just because kind of better than ever, you know, safety.

I think there's also this sort of like, you know, if, if everyone's on working on the same vendor things, things are easier.

But I think architecturally you should be thinking more about design patterns and reuse.

Yeah.

Rather than consolidating into a single tech stack because things are moving so rapidly.

If you spend two years choosing a tech in three years time, it would be the.

Probably the one you don't want to be on anymore.

Yeah, exactly.

Have design patterns that allow you to swap new stuff in and out easily and you know, rapidly that that's a better approach to architecture.

Yeah.

And then.

And then having healthy communities within your organization to share good stuff and failures.

Yeah.

So what can we reuse and adopt elsewhere within the.

The enterprise.

Yeah.

Who Is the.

Who's the kind of biggest role model person you admire?

No one really.

Maybe my dog.

Yeah, he lives in the moment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not a bad one.

Probably my wife though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean she's, she's been an amazing mother to our kids.

And did she go back to working in the end?

No, no, I mean she, she runs, she does run co.

Runs a PR agency of her own that specialize in FX and stuff.

But yeah, never, she never went back full time.

Left it, left it during the contracting.

But yeah, that didn't turn out to be a contractor.

She's really, you know, her, her work is, is our kids, basically.

They've turned out really well.

Yeah.

Good.

And then the final question is, what's the best thing about working in insurance?

Yeah, as I said earlier, it's, it's the, the, the ability to make a massive difference.

Yeah.

You know, it's.

There's so much that we can do with technology and insurance.

So it's exciting and it's just going to get faster and more exciting in the next few years.

So.

So you're glad you answered the phone call to me and it went.

Yeah, I am really, really tough.

So thank you for that.

No problem.

Well, look, amazing to have you on and I'm glad we eventually got it done.

So thanks for making some time.

It's really good to talk through some stuff.

I did know there's some stuff I didn't.

So it was great to have a chat about it.

I'm sure there'll be some people that want to reach out and get into touch and.

And stuff like that.

Are you, you kind of LinkedIn the best place to get hold of you.

If you want to connect, just message me on LinkedIn.

Yeah, amazing.

Well, look, thanks for coming on.

Plenty more episodes coming like subscribe etc and we will catch you again next time.

Cheers, Paul.

Thank you.

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