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In this episode of Making Risk Flow, host Juan de Castro speaks with Carl Bach, CEO of Hartford Underwriting Agency, about how a 200-year-old insurer is modernising for the future. They discuss Hartford’s brand refresh, maintaining its historic stag emblem while evolving its global identity. Carl outlines the strategic transformation of the company’s Global Specialty business, which began in 2019, focusing on streamlining operations and ramping up specialisation in marine, energy, and financial lines.
The conversation also covers Hartford’s international growth ambitions through Lloyd’s syndicate 1221, its approach to serving diverse market segments, and its use of AI and intelligent document processing in underwriting. Carl shares insights on balancing tradition with innovation, underscoring Hartford’s values—especially “own it with pace”—as the company embraces change and seizes new opportunities in a fast-evolving industry.
Listen to the full episode: here
Juan de Castro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Making Risk Flow. Today I'm joined by Carl Bach, who is the CEO of The Hartford Underwriting Agency. Carl, thank you so much for joining me today.
Carl Bach: It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks Juan.
Juan de Castro: Let's kick it off. I mean, it would be fantastic if you gave us a quick overview on your role, your background, and then we'll take it from there.
Carl Bach: Yeah, brilliant. So I run The Hartfords Lloyd Syndicate, Syndicate 1221, and also receive International Business as it stands today, which to be honest, 95% of it is written through our Lloyd’s business. It's about a $550 million for The Hartford, but growing, and certainly we have aspirations to continue to expand. I've been in London now for 25 years plus. I can't shake the accent, but I certainly call it home now. And for me, it's just been a phenomenal journey to ultimately get to The Hartford. I came here in 2001. My first day of work was actually 9-11. So walking into the AIG building on that day was kind of swiftly sent home and started my career, obviously here in London with a great degree of uncertainty and sadness, but spent some time at AIG. Eight years with AIG and then joined Navigators with a real opportunity to rebuild a Financial Lines and casualty business. And then it became part of The Hartford in 2019. So coming up on six years via The Hartford's acquisition of Navigators. So it's been a phenomenal journey. I think London as an insurance marketplace over that time, both the company market and the Lloyd’s market has changed dramatically. And we're just really excited to be part of that. And I know The Hartford's aspirations now internationally, are growing and we think we've got a phenomenal platform in Lloyd’s and a phenomenal brand to take advantage of the opportunities that the market provides.
Juan de Castro: Definitely. Just on your point about shaking your accent, I've tried to do that for my last 25 years, too. And I totally unsuccessfully as you can see.
Carl Bach: Lean into it. That's what I was told. Lean into it.
Juan de Castro: Definitely. I think when you're younger, you try to get rid of the accent and then you realize it's part of who you are, right? So that's totally fine. So quite recently, you guys have announced, a complete, brand refresh, which I was telling you looks absolutely fantastic. Very modern. Tell me a bit more about the rationale for that, but also in the context of the history of The Hartford. Where are you guys now?
Carl Bach: Yeah. So I'm glad you like it. I think it's been really well received. I know all of our team here in London and Asia and Miami really, really have a warm to it. And I think it's a perfect time to do it. Before I dive into that Juan, maybe if you give me a few minutes, just sort of give an overview of The Hartford. I think the brand is phenomenally well established in the U.S. and is growing here in London. But I think the familiarity with the brand across, outside of those regions is limited and that's something that we're trying to address. So The Hartford was founded in 1810. It's an iconic and trusted insurance company that offers a diverse mix of products, largely focused on property and casualty. With the brand relaunch, we've rebranded our businesses and we're really writing businesses across five key segments, I would say. The first would be business insurance, which accounts for about 54% of the revenue that we write across the enterprise, and within business insurance, you have small business. We're a leading brand, leading player in the small business sector. We have over a million small business customers, a technology platform that's second to none to distribute those products and a superior market position year in and year out. The second line within business insurance is middle and large business. Now, this is a unit that has built a track record of delivering meaningful growth through industry verticals. And we've made investments, huge investments in data science capabilities, industry leading pricing tools and underwriting tools to support what I would call exceptional talent in that middle market space. And then lastly, within business insurance is global specialty. That's where our Lloyd Syndicate sits, where our international business sits today. And global specialty includes a variety of specialty line coverages, such as bonds, financial lines, marine and energy, casualty, political violence, and terrorism. So that and we represent about three and a half billion dollars of business insurance. Those are the three components of business insurance. And then of the five, I'd say there's two others, right? So we write employee benefits only in the States. We serve over 20 million individuals throughout the United States across multiple product lines. And then lastly, personal insurance, where The Hartford is an exclusive provider of AARP home and auto insurance for more than three decades, something that we're very, very proud of. And we specialize in customers that are 50 years and older. So that just gives you a little bit of perspective on the group. I mean, with that history, we take great pride in that. We insured Abraham Lincoln's home in Illinois. We provided personal accident insurance for Babe Ruth, one of the most famous baseball players in history. And we insured iconic sites in the U.S., such as the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. So a huge, huge history and brand awareness in the U.S.. Building internationally, one of my main objectives is to do that not only in London, but also beyond. And with that, I think the timing of the brand refresh couldn't be better. The Hartford now is embracing ambitious growth and innovation strategy centered on our customers and their changing needs, right? So our brand, we feel, must evolve with the times and must evolve with the businesses that we serve. So this has been a hugely valuable opportunity for us to create lasting impressions and deepen the relationships we have with our customers and employees and start to talk about this brand and this iconic brand throughout the world. So, on February 6th, we actually unveiled it in a really cool way. I think Chris Swift and the rest of his executive leadership team rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange and launched the brand. And we did it subsequently through a campaign around the world. So, you know, I think the refreshed brand identity features a bold contemporary look and kind of bringing our iconic stag into the modern times, but also honoring that rich history that we have within The Hartford. I think it really just celebrates The Hartford strength, which has been built on centuries of trust from the business, our employees and the customers we serve. So we're super excited about it. We updated some of our colours. Again, generally they were sort of blue, tones of blue, but we updated the typography to create a sort of a vibrant new look. And core colours now are black for stability, claret for our heritage and fuchsia really for the modernity of what we're trying to do. So I think it's been a great opportunity. Ultimately, Juan, our employees exemplify our brand. So it's not just been about the logo and the brand refresh, despite the excitement that's generated. For us, behaviours are extremely important. So we refreshed everything from our company behaviours in terms of how we live into the brand. We've refreshed our vision, our values, our leader profiles, which really act as a guide and setting expectations about what we expect from our leaders across the business. So it's been more than just the brand. It's been more of the behaviours. And what we've done is, again, much like the brand, the logo, it's not been major tweaks, but I think they've been enough to, I think, reset the expectations of our teams, right? So our new behaviours, I would say, I'd call out, I think, really sort of create that sense of our time is now. So I think the new behaviours are customer first. So prioritising our customers and everything we do is extremely important for us. Solve it with innovation, own it with pace and live it as One Hartford. So own it with pace, solve it with innovation, just an expansion of our older behaviours which were own it and solve it. But I think really adding with pace and with innovation, really underlines where we're going with investing and building underwriting tools experimenting with technology here in London, etc.. And then live it as One Hartford really for me is something that we've embraced, because working collaboratively as a group is something that's again, part of our DNA. And it's so important for us and I really view lost being part of the heart for syndicate, 1221. Being part of The Hartford is a competitive advantage for us, so making sure that we're connecting across the enterprising. Leveraging the strengths, leveraging the product breath and we're doing things that I think, smaller syndicates, you know, and I'd class us as a small syndicate. We're less than one percent of the Lloyd's Market, 550 million dollars, Juan, but we get such a lift from being part of The Hartford and we're able to access data and science capabilities, we're able to access the power of the distribution and relationships the group has. We're able to access an office of sustainability that helps us drive our own ESG strategies. So it's really been a great six years as being part of The Hartford. If I can kind of close the loop on that.
Juan de Castro: Yeah. That rebrand, that just quick anecdote or quick point to make, we were looking at the evolution of your logo from. I mean, all the last 100 years and it's quite, it's outstanding how this stag has been, I mean, it was originally hand drawn. I think you mentioned over 100 years ago, and it's how you've kept that reference in the logo. Even it's nowadays, it looks like very modern logo but it still keeps the heritage of where you came from.
Carl Bach: Absolutely, so important for us, our rich, deep history is something that we're incredibly proud of. So I think the team that put it all together, from the logo, from the behaviours, from our refreshed vision and values, I think it's just come together at such an opportune time for us.
Juan de Castro: And is there a need to, behind that, refreshed values? Is there also a change in the level of ambition?
Carl Bach: Absolutely, we're excited. There definitely is. I think over the past few years, we've been able to capitalise on the strength of the Hartford, as I mentioned. But really, as an organisation, as well as the businesses that I lead, we pivoted to being a growth-oriented and innovative company. We've got an investing mindset, a build mindset, and the brand is just coming along with us. So I think our aspirations globally, you can feel it, are really to continue to expand our market share in Lloyd’s. It's to take our products. We've taken a strategy to really go narrow and deep in our chosen industry verticals, where we don't want to be all things to all people. We have a very deep focus on a few core lines of business that are anchored around industry verticals. And we want to expand the products within those verticals, but also take them to new geographies, that underscores our recent expansion into Singapore. We're doing that through our Hong Kong platform today. And we're doing that in Latin America through Miami. So our ambitions are increasing for sure. And the support that we have within The Hartford, the wider organization, the investment that we're getting from the group underscores that. So it's great. I mean, I think we became part of The Hartford Navigators did in 2019. And you'll recall the state of the market. In May 2019, when the acquisition closed, we were heavily focused on remediation across some lines of business, not unlike the rest of our competitors in Lloyd’s. And we also had to integrate. We had to integrate with Hartford. And we had to integrate against the backdrop of a global pandemic with COVID. So we were very internally focused the first three years across those three things. And fortunately, we spent the height of those hard market years. I'd say, rebuilding our foundations, making very bold, strong, strategic decisions. Really focused around our product breadth, our geographic distribution, and sort of our legal entities. So the first thing we did was we looked at our products. We ultimately made some tough decisions, narrowed our focus into really marine energy, financial lines, specialty, casualty, and then ultimately trade credit and political risk. So really wanted to be focused on hiring deep technical specialist underwriters and giving them the tools of giving them everything they need to sort of provide and serve our customers in those segments. We looked at our geographic footprint and I think you alluded to it earlier, Juan. I think there's so much runway in our backyard here in London and we had offices throughout Europe. We had far too many distribution points than we needed to. And we weren't as focused on London as we should be. So we narrowed our geographic footprint. And then we also conducted a legal entity rationalisation and it came up with two underwriting legal entities as opposed to the four that we started with as part of The Hartford. And the primary one today is our Lloyd Syndicate 1221. But we also have a branch of an insurance company in the U.S. that writes about $50 million of business with reinsurance and marine energy. That just gives us a little bit of duality and an option outside of Lloyd’s. But really going forward, our primary objective is to build scale. through Lloyd’s and execute on our expansion plans using Lloyd’s as our strategic vehicle.
Juan de Castro: One thing you mentioned earlier was really in The Hartford, you write from the very small commercial risks all the way through San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. So pretty much the whole spectrum of risks. And obviously that brings lots of benefits because clients can grow within The Hartford as they grow. Then it also gives you a large footprint. But quite often, insurers also find struggle with identifying how should you serve different sizes of clients. So you cannot operate internally the same way for a very large risk and for SME risk. So how do you structure that within The Hartford? Do you have, I assume you've got different entities focused on different segments?
Carl Bach: Yeah. So as I said in the beginning, so if you start at the enterprise level, so you've got business insurance and within business insurance, you've got the segmentation through the divisions that we've created to serve the different customer segments. So small business is focused on exactly that. 1 to 10, 1 to 20 person firms, independent businesses. And we do that exceptionally well. That we're a number one, you have a superior market position in that space. And we've implemented a technology platform that we've rolled out to brokers and agents across the U.S. that enables really just an unbelievable experience for our customers. So to your point, a very different model to then what we have with a global specialty, which is focused primarily on large complex risk, risk managed accounts. And that's really what we do mostly here at Lloyd's, Juan. So we have within our book of business, almost 85%, is middle to large companies, we're meeting with risk managers we're selling, generally, multiple products to several of our clients in the sense that we know them, but we know them on a very different level since they are small commercial business does our small business. So if I look to the future, I think that's what also excites me. That's what also excites, I think, the leadership throughout The Hartford. So to set another way, today, we're really bringing a small fraction of what The Hartford's core capabilities, experience, and value proposition is to the international markets, right? We're largely focused on that large segment. So I think when you look forward to the next five, 10 years, there's a huge runway for not just us at Lloyd’s, but expanding that customer segment strategy through Lloyd’s and maybe through other vehicles as well.
Juan de Castro: So how do you think about that growth, I guess, specifically for the large commercial segment? How are we going to drive? What are the three, five enablers of that strategy for the next few years?
Carl Bach: Yeah, so I think the core strategy for us in growing our large segment is we want to continue to broaden our product breadth in the chosen industry verticals where we are. So take energy for example. We have a very strong brand in the energy market, strong underwriting team focused largely on upstream energy through traditional oil and gas. And so when we looked at opportunities in that space, very much aligning with our overall group strategy from a sustainability perspective, we started doing a lot of work on the power and renewable space. And what we ultimately found is that so many of our traditional oil and gas clients are making huge amounts of investments in the renewable space. And so we already have a client base that we can help and assist through their journey to diversifying their energy production. So we entered the power and renewable space, Juan, earlier this year. We hired a market-leading underwriter. And then in terms of what we do is to make sure that we're supporting not only our customers, but the profitable build out of that business, behind that underwriter sits specialist claims handlers, we've hired additional risk engineers, some from industry, some from outside of industry, and creating an infrastructure to support the underwriting of that business. And then backing those underwriters with data led tools, enhanced pricing models, and obviously exposure management systems to navigate that space. So that's one example, I would say, building our product suite in our chosen verticals.
Juan de Castro: So would you say it is less about massively expanding the lines of business? Do you want to stay focused on the lines that you're experts in, but within those lines, make sure that you're covering all your clients' needs?
Carl Bach: Absolutely. So I think we want to go narrow and deep in those chosen industry verticals. And then also we want to take those product capabilities to other geographic regions. And that's what you see with our Singapore expansion. We're starting to prioritise what products we bring next to areas like Miami. So for instance, our Latin American business is hubbed out of Miami. We're largely marine focused, but also financial lines focused. And so we're looking at how we bring more of our capabilities, whether it be through casualty, whether it be through political violence and terrorism, whether it be through trade credit, political risk, whatever it might be. And then we're looking at mapping that across the globe to see where we go to next. But I think in the short to medium term, again, we want to make sure that we're growing our core lines of business. We're expanding our market share and we're getting great support through our broker relationships. We want to continue to just expand our appetite from a risk perspective. That might be just sort of broadening coverage. That might be, for example, in the cargo space, looking at new areas, new types of cargo and products in that space, and then adding those new capabilities. I think I wouldn't expect us to try to run it expanding outside of those core lines of business. I think what I would say, Juan, is we are generally pretty heavily casualty focused. So I think building out our property capabilities is something that's on our to-do list. We write specialist property. We have a transport book that really deals with ports and terminals. And we write property there. We write property with our power and within our upstream energy business. But and obviously political violence and terrorist is a property coverage. But I think there's other areas where we can go, where we've got talented technical underwriting expertise in construction liability, but probably the lack, a little light on the property capability. So that's sort of, I think, filling out those gaps that we have in our current product capabilities is where you'll see us in the next couple of years.
Juan de Castro: And, Carl, before the call, you were mentioning as part of this kind of refreshed ambition, expanding product lines, expanding your product or your geographic reach. You were thinking, obviously, that will also require focus on operating model efficiency, how that supports your expansion. It would be great to hear a bit more about your thoughts on that.
Carl Bach: Yeah. So, look, I think everyone across the market is looking at operating model. The Lloyd’s market is an exceptional place and an exciting place to do business right now. And you can see a variety of operating models develop. You see existing ones evolve. And we're looking very, very closely at that. So let me unpack it. So I think my COO has recently hired a Head of Technology, Darren Uphill. He was at Aegis recently. So I think one of the things that we're doing is strengthening our investment in the technology space. We're doing that locally, but also leveraging, I think, the capabilities that we have throughout the group, which are exceptional. We built, a couple of years ago, a data analytics function locally here in London to support not only our portfolio management, to build better insights into our customers, better insights into how we're performing and trending and trading with our broker partners. And that's been a huge step forward. And look, we've redesigned the operations world in terms of how we support our underwriters and then how we start thinking about how that might evolve. And so right now we've got an end-to-end project on the go where we're looking at basically redesigning our underwriting process. I think I'd say at the outset, you know, AI will be a core component of that. But again, given the space that we trade in Juan, and that large technical complex risk managed account, it will augment what we do. It will enable our underwriters to do it better, faster and more efficiently. So I think that's the underlying message I would leave there. You know, a lot of work going into what the operating model of the future looks like, focused on how we empower and enable our underwriters through AI. And I think we're going to make meaningful strides, certainly this year, but over the coming years. I'd say our focus tends to be on creating efficiencies through guided underwriting workflows, streamlining underwriting documentation. And then basically trying to use IDP, intelligent document processing, to get us to a stage where we're taking manual tasks off underwriting operations folks, you know, PVT is the perfect example. And that's our first use case where we've delivered IDP actually this quarter to the team where it's taking schedule values that are generally input and transforming the underwriting process by solving what is a major manual pain point within that, solving it through AI. So I think, focus on streamlining, creating a more efficient underwriting process. I guess our chosen strategy, Juan, is that we want to be a leader in our chosen lines of business. There's going to be some product lines within those core verticals where we follow. But we have plans either to invest or look at how we more efficiently be a follow market. And I'd say we're watching with great interest and doing a lot of work around things like the fast follow model. I mean, there's new terms. I'm learning new terms by the day for that follow space, whether it's algorithmic underwriting, fast follow, enhanced underwriting. I think it's going to have to be a core component of how we trade going forward. So we're investing a lot in that space. And I think being part of The Hartford, we're not unique in the market, Juan, in terms of being part of a U.S. parent. That in and of itself is helpful to us as we look to scale. It helps us create broader use cases for technology investment. But as a technology and innovation focused enterprise, we're starting to move the pieces across the enterprise with more of a focus on international. So I'm extremely excited about the fact that Deepa Soni, the group's Chief Information Officer, she recently joined our syndicate board. She's helping guide us on that. We also have the group CUO, Clay Bassett, who's also joined our syndicate board in the last six months. To guide us from an underwriting excellence perspective. Both of those executives are world class in their chosen areas. And so that complemented with my executive team here. We're spending a lot of time on the operating model and spending a lot of time on underwriting excellence.
Juan de Castro: And then one last question and perhaps a bit of a challenge. And I want to bring it back to the refreshed values you started the conversation with about innovation pace. I think one that positively surprised me was this one about pace, delivering at pace or evolving at pace. I guess the question is, where would you score your business today in terms of pace and where do you want it to be?
Carl Bach: That's a great question. I think we demand excellence from our people as part of our culture. And nine times out of 10, I'd say we're not moving fast enough, but we are moving incredibly quickly. So I think I'd use the language I used earlier, right? I think this is a great reset for us to start thinking about just acting with a greater sense of urgency. I think there's a really small window of opportunity right now. Juan, you know it from the business that you're involved in and the InsurTech space in general. There's a small window of opportunity. We're talking a couple of years to really create that competitiveness advantage through investment, through talent, through really unpacking existing business models and challenging it and reimagining them. So that's part of the, with pace change, Juan. But I can feel it throughout every engagement I have, every meeting. You can really feel it's been amped up. And there's an excitement driving that. And I think we're really well placed for it. It's really something that we spend a lot of time as a leadership team thinking about and how do we move faster. We're going to need some partnerships, externally to help us with that. We're going to use and leverage the wider enterprise. I think we're doing that better each day. And we're going to go to market and hire best in class talent. And I think we've done that in many areas. When I speak to, speak to our employees, again, we're still just over 200 employees in London, right? So we're small enough to still be nimble. And I think if I look back five years ago, there's functions that didn't exist, right? Whether it be distribution, data analytics. We started as part of the Navigators coming into The Hartford. We had a team of four full-time actuaries. We've now got 12. We're focused on creating data science, underwriting tools to help implement and embed segmentation and better risk decisions across all of our lines of business. We've just evolved so much as a business and it's going to continue to evolve at an unbelievable pace. So I think we're just trying to prepare the workforce. We're trying to make sure that we're doing everything we can to use this, you know, these coming years to create that competitive advantage. And I think we've got a great culture. We talked about competitive advantages a little bit ago, but I like to always say our culture is definitely one of those competitive advantages. It's defined by inclusion and collaboration. And we really do live that each day. So it's a really exciting time to be in the London market. It's a really exciting time to be part of The Hartford on so many aspects. And it's great to see the market start to take note of our value proposition of our people, of our brand. We recently had the pleasure of engaging with Grace Church in their presentation to us of our underwriting and claims service quality. We're I think one of a few carriers in the market that received both the claims and the underwriting piece. And it's really great to see that recognition coming through. And that's thanks to really all of our employees here internationally and beyond.
Juan de Castro: This has been fantastic, Carl. I'm going to wrap it up with a takeaway, which is, I think is very inspiring, which I think at some point you mentioned. There's a window of a year or two where you either evolve, expand, adapt, or it would be tougher. I think throughout the episode, I think you've talked about the mix of your level of ambition, the clarity of the vision around expanding product lines, geographically, evolution of the operating model. And I think that combined with the value around delivering at pace or evolving at pace and the sense of urgency. I think that combination of ambition, clarity of vision and pace is exactly what you need to, to kind of capture the opportunity in this window in the next couple of years. So Carl, it's been absolutely fantastic having you in the podcast. Really inspiring. Thank you so much for joining me.
Carl Bach: Thank you, Juan. Really appreciate it. I've really enjoyed it as well.
