Ep279 Greg Hendrick, Vantage: A Labour of Love

It’s great to have a guest of the calibre of Greg Hendrick CEO of Vantage back on the show, not least because his relatively new and young businesses is still growing fast and there is a lot to catch up on. Now five years old Vantage is set to write around $1.6bn in gross insurance and specialty reinsurance premiums and is managing $1.5bn in ILS funds. But listening back it’s the quality and breadth of the discussion we have that I am really pleased with. Greg is hugely experienced and once he updates me on where Vantage is and how he sees the market and the firm’s strategy within it, the conversation quickly moves on and probably goes deeper into the art of underwriting and portfolio construction than I have with anyone on the podcast so far. We also dissect the best applications of AI and other major trends, such as the flow of business into Excess and Surplus lines, the boom in MGA and fronting and hybrid carrier formation and the phenomenon of algorithmic underwriting and facilitisation. Finally, as this is a business set up with a likely 5-7 or 8-year initial investor timeframe and the five-year threshold has now been crossed, we round off on where Vantage is in its development journey and the prospects for M&A to complete its platform as well as the chances of a possible future IPO for the business in the medium term. Greg doesn’t hold back on any of this. He’s a great communicator and knows exactly what he is doing. He speaks with the absolute confidence of someone completely on top of his brief. And I think you will be able to sense the big smile on his face coming through the audio recording. It’s rare to get an opportunity to put everything you have learned in a successful career into practice and Greg’s clearly been enjoying his time building Vantage. I really enjoyed talking to him and got a lot of this conversation. Listen on and I think you will too. LINKS: We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo: https://www.advantagego.com