Ep175 Julian James, Sompo International: A Degree of Equilibrium

Today’s guest is someone who has had a career now into its fifth decade and is someone who I have been interviewing on an off for just under 20 years.

He has held senior roles in broking businesses, underwriting firms and right in the heart of Lloyd’s.

Today Julian James is CEO of Global Markets Commercial P&C Insurance at Sompo International.

This is a global role that encompasses everything relating to commercial P&C in the Sompo organisation that is outside Japan or North America.

Few executives could cope with a role that is this international, stretching from the far east all the way across to Brazil.

But it is a job that suits someone like Julian down to the ground because he is someone who has been a globe-trotter for as long as I have known him and has a global outlook on the insurance business

But just because I and many of you know already him, it doesn’t mean that Julian has lost the ability to surprise.

In this interview I find someone energised and enthused about the challenge of creating and presenting a consistent and coherent Sompo offering to worldwide clients. With myriad jurisdictions, systems, brokers, languages and cultures to deal with, this is extremely hard to do.

I also meet someone heading a business that has been discreetly increasing many of its risk appetites while most others have been moving in the opposite direction and which has grown quickly as a result.

I also meet a global representative of a huge business that as recently as 5 years ago was not at all well known or understood outside its core Japanese market and has a large amount of communicating to do.

Listening back this is a remarkably broad and fun conversation that covers a vast array of topics and lifts the lid on Julian and the wider Sompo organisation’s strategic thinking on the key issues facing the market.

We even briefly touch on Eastern and Western philosophy.

NOTES

We spoke about some ancient history and I promised to put something in the notes about it.

Julian worked at Sedgwick (a major UK-headquartered broker) early in his career. Sedgwick was acquired by MMC in 1998, at the height of what was then an unprecedented wave of consolidation that established MMC and Aon as the first genuinely global broking houses: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB904040627273832000

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