In this Industry Insight episode of On Aon, Emma Crookes, global insurance vertical leader for Aon, sits down with Andy Marcell, CEO of Global Solutions for Aon, about how the insurance industry is evolving to meet a more complex and fast‑moving risk landscape.
They discuss why insurers are prioritizing stronger data foundations, more integrated capital strategies and new approaches to talent as they adapt to emerging risks — from climate and cyber to technology‑driven change. Andy shares why insurance remains a critical enabler of global growth, how insurers can differentiate themselves through better insight and decision‑making and what it takes to stay relevant in an industry where confidence, capital and innovation are deeply connected.
Key Takeaways:
Experts in this episode:
Key Moments:
(1:30) Andy Marcell explains why Aon launched the insurance industry vertical, moving beyond reinsurance alone to address insurers’ broader business, risk and people challenges.
(5:35) Data emerges as a defining challenge for insurers, shaping how they assess risk, deploy capital and adapt to a rapidly changing market.
Soundbites:
Andy Marcell:
“The type of skills that the insurance companies need to have are different and are rapidly changing. And so, to connect those two things, strategy and people, is more and more important than it’s ever been.”
Intro:
Hello and welcome to On Aon — Aon’s global podcast that explores the top issues affecting businesses around the world. With each week focusing on either a Risk Capital, Human Capital, Industry or Global topic.
This week it’s the turn of our Industry Insight, which looks at the Risk Capital and Human Capital issues impacting a particular sector.
And today we’re diving into the insurance industry along with
• Andy Marcell, Aon’s Global Solutions CEO, and
• Emma Crookes, who’s Aon’s Global Insurance Vertical Leader
Their discussion covers a broad range of topics — from the changing nature of the industry and the importance of building the right data infrastructure to the particular talent challenges the sector currently faces if it is to compete in a constantly changing world.
Emma Crookes (00:00.11)
Hello everyone, welcome to this episode of On Aon. My name is Emma Crookes and I'm the Global Insurance Vertical Leader here at Aon.
In this week's Industry Insight episode, we're going to turn our focus to the insurance industry. In a recent episode of On Aon, our new CEO of Risk Capital, Joe Peiser, described how businesses are seeing increased volatility and significant changes in the supply of insurance and the supply of risk transfer capacity.
And this is having a profound impact on the risks and people decisions that the insurance industry is having to make at the moment — let alone with the volatile geopolitical backdrop the industry is navigating through.
So, I'm delighted to have with us today, Andy Marcell, Aon CEO of Global Solutions, to help us identify the key trends impacting the insurance industry. Great to have you here, Andy.
Andy Marcell (00:53.048)
Hi Emma, nice to be here. How are you doing?
Emma Crookes (00:56.652)
Very well, thank you. Very well. So, Andy, you joined us at Aon over 10 years ago now to lead our reinsurance business and a lot has changed since then. Firstly, for our clients and our carrier partners. Secondly, at Aon in how we structure ourselves around our clients and involving solutions to support them. And of course, working very closely with our carriers. And thirdly for you, Andy, and your role personally from being the CEO of Reinsurance to Risk Capital and now CEO of Global Solutions.
So, one might say your role has evolved beautifully in tandem with the market. But starting with when you joined us to run reinsurance, so tell us why did you start the insurance industry vertical at Aon?
Andy Marcell (01:36.024)
Well, you know, we had a view, I had a view that we needed to be more relevant to the clients than merely going in there and talking about their reinsurance fees, which is significant, but the need was cyclical.
So, any particular moment in time back then, it was a really soft market, if you recall, 10 years ago. And when we were thinking about what are their big issues, their big issue weren't reinsurance costs. It was how do I attract and retain talent, the big business issues they're facing, rising medical inflation.
And there were different around the world, whether it was adoption of new technology, which is now magnified to sort of 10 times what it was then, but it was still real then. They were thinking about how do I implement dark green technology and change my policy admin system?
And there were a ton of issues that they were facing. And we were saying, hey, we're just doing the reinsurance here. And when you have such privileged relationships as reinsurance brokers with your clients, often with the C-suite, that actually they share with you their concerns and what keeps them up. I know it's a bit of a cliche, but that's what they tell you. Thinking that through, we were working for this incredible company, Aon, that has all this global connected capability that now be segregated into human capital and risk capital. And we weren't delivering it at all, right? In an organized way to our clients. And so, the privileged position that we had, both as an advisor to the C-suite of insurance companies and working for a firm that has a wide range of capabilities.
Just putting that together. Now it seems obvious, but at the time it was how do you actually execute that? And you're now leading that for us, which is great. And getting people to buy in, work across solution lines, work across geographies, keep the client at the center of everything that we do. That's why we did it and it's worked.
Emma Crookes (03:19.854)
And sometimes it's a fantastic way to talk to clients who we may not be working with on the reinsurance side as well, or actually understand what their challenges are too, and maybe one day even support them with their reinsurance purchase — who knows. So, in taking on this new role, the most recent one particularly, what have you learned and hopefully enjoyed in stepping out of the world of day-to-day reinsurance?
Andy Marcell (03:43.586)
Wow. I have had a, you know, a quick fast-track education in global benefits and health and talent. You know, the commercial insurance portion of the job is always in the wheelhouse because as a reinsurance broker, you're constantly looking at insurance company portfolios and advising your clients on how to optimize.
So that was much more natural. But as I said before, learning, that's been a steep and fun learning curve, but it's also been really great because as I said before, the needs of our clients — particularly now with AI and the things that we can do in transformation or the challenges faced by rising health costs and what we're doing with GLP-1 — everything has led to this point where talking to the insurance company clients about their major issues and how we can solve them and having the ability to look across in a consistent way our Human Capital capabilities is just, it's just fabulous fun.
And we had a meeting, I think I told you about this, we had a meeting in Utah. We're [had] like 24 CEOs of regional insurance companies in the US. And so, what really motivated them was when we started talking about what we're doing is GLP-1, what we're doing in talent with AI and how to plan for the workforce of the future. And afterwards, the level of engagement and follow-up was, it was 90%. So, it was great and it was really gratifying that you can put this business together in a way that actually helps your clients do more — and particularly do more with Aon — is always a good thing. We just do more to solve their problems. It's phenomenal.
Emma Crookes (05:19.118)
Yeah, definitely a good feeling when you get to the crux of what's really challenging them and seeking to solve it. So, interesting then, so when you speak to these insurers, CEOs in Utah or wherever in the world you travel to all the time, what are the issues that consistently keep resurfacing, regardless of geography or size?
Andy Marcell (05:36.12)
Well, apart from what I just touched on, the sort of the baseline challenge, is data. We're selling, they're selling a product that's forward-looking, right? And you don't know the cost of it when you sell it because of all the changing exposures that they face. And there's a ton of technology out there that can help you get to a more consistent way of viewing risk and managing your capital — whether it's AI or some of the new sort of severe convective store models. There's a bunch of capability that's more readily available than it ever has been. It can have a dramatic impact in the way that you deploy capital and think about risk.
And you want to do that with your proprietary data. There's depending where you are in the world, there's a lot of public information, public data you can get your hands on, but ultimately the differentiator is how you manage your own data and getting to that data in an organized way and changing your systems is a significant cost but a massive benefit.
And so, when you're talking to those clients about how they're thinking about that, that is that single biggest challenge. Right. So, there's, can think of many clients that I won't name here that have really spent the last 10 years thinking about how to create that data architecture.
So now with the, with AI doing all the things that it can do to help insurance companies make better decisions more quickly, likely at lower costs. Right. They'll have a strategic advantage over those that weren't able to do that.
But the great thing about AI and some of the other technologies that people are using is actually you can close that gap pretty quickly. And that is where they're solely focused. And of course, in a soft market, they're also focused on the big challenge now is M&A, how do they position themselves? How do they think of third-party capital? But primarily it's just the basic rudimentary data management is more and more important than it's ever been.
Emma Crookes (07:25.038)
This might lead on from that data topic, but how closely linked do you think to the risk and capital strategy with the talent strategy is in the market now with insurance today? And where do you still feel there's a real disconnect?
Andy Marcell (07:39.438)
Well, the talent strategy, when you think about how do you compensate people for their underwriting results? Is it gross or net? Is it volume? That's always been a challenge to align underwriting and business objectives at a regional level or a product level.
And so those have always existed and there's always advice that should be given around that. But because of the changing sort of data needs and the AI capabilities and how risk will be delivered — digital distribution, whether it is to consumer or portfolio management or pooling aggregated risk to transfer to third-party capital.
That just means that the type of skills that the insurance companies need to have are different and are rapidly changing.
And so, to connect those two things, strategy and people is more and more important than it's ever been. And those that stay ahead of that curve, we're advising in that space all the time, as you know, that is a critical differentiator, those that will win and win less as a consequence of being able to manage that change.
By the way, the same is true of us. We're going through the same thing right now. How do we think about it? How do we adopt it? We're advising people and advising ourselves on the workforce of the future. This is not a singular thing for insurance companies. This is pretty widespread.
Emma Crookes (08:58.446)
That's why I feel very lucky working in the insurance industry vertical, because we obviously live and breathe working with insurers. We also suffer the same challenges often. So, it's a really interesting dynamic going and talking with these insurance company leaders as well.
So, what do think are the biggest barriers when you're connecting those decisions? And maybe ask a different way. If you were advising a new insurer entering the market today, what would you tell them to do differently from day one? What would you have told yourself to do differently as a broker than evolving into what you do now?
Andy Marcell (09:31.502)
So what I'm about telling, I actually just had this conversation with a Lloyd’s syndicate that's relatively new, is how are you going to differentiate yourself ultimately is how you set up your data accumulation and your information systems so that you can adopt, whether it's agentic AI or partner with AWS or whomever it is to make sure that you have the greatest insight into the risk profile that you have and that you want and how you can package that to trade it whether into the reinsurance market or into third party capital. So that you don't have to ever be thinking about how do I get to my data? You already have solved that and you're actually spending your time innovating about risk. And that's the advantage of somebody new, it's not only someone who establishes, already have the business, right? They don't have to go and acquire it. They have it and they're going to covet it and keep it. They then have to just make sure they understand how to transfer it in the most effective way, taking advantage of all of these spoken about.
Aon, we're going through the same thing. We've invested a ton of money, $1.3 billion in creating a data architecture and creating our analyzers and investing in Aon Broker Copilot. So ultimately, we can connect our trading information with the exposure information and have real-time insight. So, you have proprietary data that's expanding all the time, whether it's the exposure data that you're building or whether it's the trading data that you have.
And the key for us now is to make sure that we can ingest that information into what people euphemistically call “data lakes.” I'm not sure that's a, it seems like an old-fashioned thing to say, but not, but certainly not data puddles. You want data lakes, want to handle your data. You need to have that structured data because as we follow this journey, the amount of exposure data and training data that we are going to create over time is going to exponentially increase.
Which means we'll be able to create more insight, which means we should be able to capture not necessarily more clients, but solve more risk problems for clients with greater insight.
Actually the insurance market itself should be an expanded share of insurance and create more insurable risks. And that's where we're headed.
And so, we're all, like you said before, we're all actually facing the same challenge, just through a different sort of lens, but it's the same fundamental challenge.
Emma Crookes (11:54.156)
I feel like you're very positive and enthusiastic response to that question has slightly hampered my final question, which is what still excites you about the insurance industry? And how do you believe it remains such a critical force in the global economy? Why is that?
Andy Marcell (12:10.69)
I love the insurance industry. I love it, I’ve dedicated my career to the insurance industry. And what I love about it is that you're dealing with real-time risks that are changing all the time. I was just thinking today, right, we had a Webex, if that's the right name for it, on the issues in the Middle East that was hosted by Joe Peiser. So, think with the clients, think through some of the issues that they're facing.
And when then roll back, we have the Baltimore Bridge and the, think of that's fundamentally changed the value of a life in a disaster. So, everyone has to readjust their exposures.
And you've got AI which is changing the risk landscape. We have cyber, which is still has a lot of issues that haven't yet been resolved. The critical cat in cyber is still, it's an outstanding question. And so, when you're thinking about insurance, you're basically dealing with all the world issues of risk that is magnifying itself into singular channels that we are asked to solve, which is great.
Climate change — that's still something that is evolving and something that we're trying to parameterize for our clients and people who are assigning capital in different ways. The data centers, what are they thinking about? We're connecting borrowing with building and lending criteria and then solving the problems of the clients. Right? So, all of this is converging around what we call the mega trends and we go, I know we talk about it a lot, but it's real and it's happening.
And honestly, to deal with the real-world issues — it's a privilege. So, it gets to the last part of the question.
All the things I just talked about, whether it's trade, thinking of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, disruption from technology, what's happening in the socioeconomic environment vis-a-vis like nuclear verdicts, or think about whether and those related risks.
These are the things that can either restrict growth in global economies or finding solutions for those will help commerce grow because people can invest capital with more confidence, right? Because their downside in some way is limited.
And that is the fun part of insurance. When you go, I'm sure when you go to a social event and people ask you what you do for a living and say, I'm in insurance. They go, oh goodness. But actually, it is, you know, actually it's really interesting, but it is really interesting. People don't necessarily believe us, but we have a tremendous impact as an industry on the world.
Emma Crookes (14:27.982)
I couldn't agree with you more. I said it better myself, but Andy, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to us today. Again, I'm naturally biased and putting your strategy to kick off the insurance industry vertical 10 years ago was clearly well received, a fantastic one, and has only expanded now.
There are actually seven other industry verticals at Aon. Obviously, insurance is still the best one, of course. All jokes aside, there's financial institutions, retail, natural resources, all responding in a similar way to provide that real data-driven insight for our clients in those industries and support and challenge our clients with their business and their strategies. That's relating both to their risk, of course, and their people strategies that we've spoken about today.
That's it. That's our time for our show today. But thank you everybody for listening. Thank you very much, Andy. And if you want to find out any more about how Aon can help. You can of course get in touch with one of us or please head to aon.com to learn more. Many thanks again, Andy, and until next time.
Outro
Thanks for tuning into the latest episode of On Aon. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to visit Aon.com to learn more about Aon.
We’ll be back next week with another episode — our Global Insight — where we’ll be looking at the impact of the latest political, economic and regulatory news.