Seven months ago, global specialty insurer
Beazley acquired Canadian MGA Creechurch Underwriters.
Last week, Beazley Canada president - and former Creechurch owner - Phil Baker spoke with
Insurance Business about the process and the business since the transaction.
“Since the date of the close in February, the priority was to get us integrated into the greater Beazley and getting our folks talking to the Beazley folks around the globe. We already had a really strong relationship with Beazley, as a capital provider for us, so that wasn’t too difficult,” he said.
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“There was the technical stuff, getting our networks integrated and everything else, and that actually went very smoothly.”
The transition has gone particularly well, Baker said, since all staff who were at Creechurch when the acquisition took place are still with the company now, at Beazley Canada.
The company has also recently hired two new underwriters, for the cyber and environment specialty products, as it continues to grow its Canadian presence.
Prior to the acquisition, the two companies already had a 20-year relationship in the Canadian market, which made things easier also, he said.
“Canada is a very competitive place to do business – perhaps as competitive as any other market on the globe,” Baker explained. “So getting growth is certainly difficult, so we focus on product development products, and getting into areas that we haven’t been in before. Certainly, the leader for us is our cyber product – Beazley Breach Response – and we are in the top three cyber writers around the globe.”
In terms of cyber, Baker said the recent monster breach at Equifax, which continues to have huge repercussions, hasn’t necessarily resulted in an uptick in cyber policies being sold. While the headlines can serve as a wakeup call to businesses, there is still work to be done nationally among the business community to extol the virtues of paying for cyber insurance.
“The common response we get from the SME space is, ‘Yeah, but we’re not Equifax’, or, ‘I’m not Sony’, or, ‘That’s not going to happen to me’,” he explained. “But certainly that’s not our message – from our statistics, we’ve handled 6,000 breaches and they weren’t all the size of Equifax.”
So, what does the future hold? The company “absolutely” expects to grow, Baker said.
“I don’t think Beazley wanted to buy and hold on Creechurch. We’ve got some aggressive growth plans that we’re in the middle of putting together,” he said.
“Our expectation is certainly to be the leading specialty insurer in Canada. We’ve had huge success doing that in the United States, and we think we can duplicate that here.”
Related stories:
Beazley Canada names new cyber risk underwriter
Beazley acquires specialist MGA, expands Canadian presence
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