David Bearman, who founded Aventum Group as an 18-year-old in 1996, is one of Insurance Business Australia's (IB) Global 100 for 2022. In an interview with IB, he talked about his difficult yet satisfying insurance journey of running and growing his international business.
Since establishing Aventum Group in 1996, Bearman has forged a unique path forward, taking the business from a small commercial retail broker in Essex to a global (re)insurance broking and underwriting business that controls over $1.1 billion gross written premiums (GWPs) and employing over 270 people across 13 offices.
Of course, running a business is not easy, whether it is a small business or a global one. In this interview, Bearman shared the struggles of running his company and its global expansion.
A believer in leading from the front or being in the office with his people, Bearman found it challenging to run his business remotely, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic led to several lockdowns that limited face-to-face interactions for long periods. However, Bearman and his people were able to remain connected, thanks to technology.
“We try, where possible, to have daily and weekly contact with every office and all the stakeholders. Obviously, the pandemic brings some benefits to our industry as far as I can see in terms of just agile working and, obviously, people accepting that things can be done over a zoom call, whereas meetings were much more traditional and the Zoom call was almost frowned upon five years ago. It's almost the standard way of doing business today, so [that] we can connect with our people and our stakeholders across the group via Zoom calls,” he said.
“The way we operate is effectively via a hub, so our worldwide offices plug in to our central operations here in London. Everything is done via a very agile and remote data collection and system, so it's been a lot easier than you might imagine.”
However, Bearman noted that running a global business means facing different regulatory environments and each market's unique issues.
When asked how he and his team faced these challenges, he said: “Our strategy from an underwriting perspective is always to go where the work is. We identify the best teams of underwriters, and we effectively build an office around them.”
Learn more about how Bearman manages Aventum Group and how he and his team faced a mountain of challenges over the years by watching his IB TV interview here.
