“I remember going out once a year to a restaurant, I never went on holiday, and as I continued my childhood I never went to university because we couldn’t afford it,” said Kerridge, who grew up in the UK. .
“I guess I went for insurance because that was the opportunity I had at the time.”
Kerridge got his break from insurance when he got a job at Barclays bank at age 18 and hasn’t looked back since. He has been with Hiscox for 26 years and has been CEO of Hiscox USA since May 2021. He has also served on the board of the American Property and Casualty Insurance Association since 2022.
The leader, at different times, has been responsible for driving the insurer’s digital commercial insurance push in both the UK and US.
Eliminate the “stigma” of insurance
Kerridge, who said there’s a “really strong business benefit” to bringing in diverse perspectives, believes his experience helped him build values that set him up for success.
“I come from that background where we weren’t good, and I think that’s a good thing, actually, because it shapes you as an adult to not take things for granted, to have values and all that: hard work and effort,” he said. Kerridge.
While the butcher’s and housewife’s son may have fallen to some degree in insurance, historically seen by some as the less attractive cousin of banking, he said insurance business who believes the industry has become a more attractive destination for talent looking to develop a “purposeful” career there.
“At the time [around 30 years ago]insurance always had a bit of a stigma, it’s a place you went into if you didn’t get into the right bench,” Kerridge said.
“I often reflect on how it is so different now; It’s almost turned upside down and insurance is an exciting place to be now with the advent of data usage and technology, and it’s a very good place to build a career.”
Diversity of thought may be something Kerridge is passionate about, but it is the diversity of experience in the early days of his career that has helped him become a more versatile and successful leader. Kerridge has worked in broker-oriented marketing, operations, underwriting and business development, and he praised “webwebbing,” or trying different roles, as a key to building versatility.
internet boom
It was the growth of the Internet that propelled Kerridge to new heights at Hiscox in the late 1990s.
“The internet was coming, people started using it, and we had dial-up modems, looking back. [dial up] it was actually very painful, but that’s when it started,” Kerridge said.
Kerridge was brought into a meeting with the then managing director of the Hiscox group, Bronek Masojada, and was asked to come up with a proposal for how the company could make the most of the Internet.
What followed three months later was a lunch (Kerridge said he still vividly remembers the meeting) in which he was given the immediate green light to go ahead with a direct-to-consumer internet proposition.
“He [Masojada] I had two questions for myself… number one was, ‘do you want to do it, get it going and go?’ and the second question was, ‘how much seed capital do you need?’
“And over lunch we literally agreed that I would do it and he had given me a million pounds in seed money to get it going.”
And thus Hiscox’s digital push in the UK was born, with the business, which Kerridge described as “really insurtech before insurtech was even a word”, launching in 1999.
Hiscox takes on USA
Ten years later, at another lunch with Masojada, then CEO, the plans for the launch of Hiscox USA would be put into motion. Given the UK’s position as a relatively small territory and its maturity at the time from a digital e-commerce perspective, the big question was where Hiscox could take its formula next.
The result was a two-week trip to the US which, for Kerridge, who was in the insurer’s digital business in the UK at the time, yielded some surprising results. Two things caught his eye: the US market at the time seemed to be about “seven years” behind the UK.
“The first was that no one was doing online in a small commercial,” Kerridge said. “I mean, I just couldn’t believe it, I was trying to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.”
The second was the regulatory environment in the supported market, which was “very heavy 13 years ago compared to the UK.”
Building a digital business of 600,000 policies
When Hiscox USA launched in 2010, it was the first small commercial insurer with a digital proposition for small businesses, according to Kerridge.
“I still pinch myself today that this unknown international company came in and built a national powerhouse in digital,” he said.
“Today we’re sitting here with over 600,000 policies in place on that digital platform, that when other carriers hear that, they say, ‘Holy cow, that’s an incredible amount of scale in a relatively short period of time.'”
While the digital business is (perhaps unsurprisingly) close to Kerridge’s heart, global insurer Hiscox has also been building out its US offering in areas such as kidnap and ransom, terrorism, media, entertainment and some of the “more traditional lines that we are known worldwide for,” Kerridge said.
So what’s next for Hiscox USA and Kerridge?
With 32 million small businesses in the US and Hiscox USA covering around 600,000 of them, there are still plenty of opportunities to grow.
“I would like to think that my legacy when I finally retire, and it is a long way off, is leaving a business that has a very strong reputation in the marketplace, because that is important to us, but a business that is several times the scale that it is today. , so several billion dollars instead of a billion, but also incredibly profitable,” Kerridge said.
Kevin Kerridge, CEO of Hiscox USA, on:
Building a distinctively American business…
“We are a normal American company, we don’t consider ourselves a global company, what we do here has a very national focus. We’re here to build America’s leading small business insurer, and that’s what we want to do.”
His greatest achievement…
“I really love my time here at Hiscox, whether I was in the CEO role or before. I still get out of bed at 4 am every morning, wanting to go to work, so I think about a lot of little things. The exciting thing for me is that I honestly feel like my greatest achievement is yet to come. You know, [we’ve built] a billion dollar business in the US today, with over 600,000 policyholders. It still feels like we’re back at the beginning.”
Feeling the “return energy” in the broker business…
“We made some decisions around our appetite, coming off of some of the bigger risks, above $100 million in revenue and, plus a couple of specialty areas like kidnap and ransom and terrorism, which are global franchises, really focusing the rump of that brokerage business on smaller policyholders. It’s very profitable, we feel like we did well to win there. And we’ve spent 18 months repositioning the business for that. That ended in May of last year.
“Since May, our underwriting teams in the regions…have been at the forefront, re-engaging and rebuilding with brokers, and getting back on that profitable growth agenda. That’s going well, you can feel the energy back in business.”
Learnings from Robert Hiscox [former Hiscox chair]…
“I was lucky enough to report to Robert Hiscox for a couple of years when he was in London and there were two things he always told me. One was: “I’ll forgive you for losing money once in a while, but don’t ever put me in a position where you lose my reputation.” That has always stayed with me. The other was ‘volume is vanity, profit is sanity’”.
Offering an “arm around the shoulder”…
“I remember when I joined Hiscox, looking to others for hope and reassurance, and sometimes an arm around my shoulder. And it happened all of a sudden, and I don’t know when, but you look back and go, ‘Blimey, I’m that person now. I’m the person other people look to for reassurance and a bit of hope when the going gets tough, and a bit of coaching.’
“[I was recently asked by someone] What advice would I give you that has worked for me, and what I told you is that there are two things that I always look for in people who work in the business.
“You come to work every day with a great attitude. The other is to come to work and make a difference. If you do those two things, you get noticed and doors open, because who wouldn’t want a person in the business on their team who has those two traits?
