I ventured back into our offices on Leadenhall Street a week ago for the first time in more than four months. Ostensibly there was some post for PPL (don’t ask) that needed sorting out, but, in reality, I was curious to see the City in lockdown. And it was an eerie sight and a strange experience. There were a few people around but not many. Most activity was centred on construction sites for buildings that may now never be occupied. Reunited with our network, my laptop logged on to our remote desktop without the rigmarole of that dual factor thingy on my phone. In the best demonstration of how long it is that we have been away, the clocks in our boardroom are still on GMT. A market that used to boast of the power of its face to face negotiations has not had one since March.
And yet we have now negotiated the second busiest renewal period with significant increases in business flowing to London – our members report in the region of a 25% uptick in US Property and Casualty business and as much as a 40% rise in US reinsurance – and everything has worked really well. So, returned to the isolation of my home bunker with the dogs gently snoring in the background, I started to ponder on whether direct human interaction will ever return to be the focal point of how we trade.
I should put these thoughts in context. I am not someone who has ever struggled in my own company. Indeed, solitude has always been something I have actively sought. So, lockdown has not found me like some social junkie pacing around my living room in the manner of a depressed polar bear in an eastern European zoo, desperate for some sort of human contact. In many ways I have enjoyed being on my own (save for the faint sounds of Mrs C crashing around in another wing of the house). And, as we all know, Zoom and Teams and the rest have performed admirably to provide the ability to meet when needed. So, if I conclude that totally remote working is not a long-term solution, it seems to me more significant than the average market socialite reaching the same view.
And that is what I believe. Meetings have worked tremendously over video – and given a fascinating insight into people’s homes that has been a blessing for the nosey. But I have really missed what happens in the periphery of meetings. The chance encounter as you walk out and catch up on gossip (what has happened to gossip) or get the opportunity to chase someone up for something. The cathartic relief of being able to nobble a like-minded colleague at the end of a particularly bemusing meeting and gently enquire: “what the **** was that all about?”. None of that works when all you do is that awkward wave and hit the “leave meeting” button.
And while video meetings can preserve a sense of community – we have only missed one daily team meeting since we started on the first day after we all headed home – I am not sure how well they would work at creating one. This has really been brought home to me in our international networks. Both BIPAR, our European federation, and the World Federation of Insurance Intermediaries have been meeting regularly as developments in each other’s countries have been of extreme interest through the pandemic. Again, via Zoom (admittedly at some weird and wonderful times for some of us when you have Sydney on one end and Mexico City on the other), and again very successful. But that success has been totally reliant on the fact that we all know and trust each other. And those relationships have developed through physical meetings and, much more importantly, the casual interaction around the meetings and the dinners and receptions we have shared. Had we had to embrace a new member into those groups during these times, I am really not sure how it would have worked.
Transactions and transactional relationships work well remotely and through a screen. But what makes London a marketplace is about so much more than just the act of placing a risk or paying a claim. What our chairman likes me to call “tacit knowledge exchange” (because it sounds so much better than gossiping) is crucial to that ability to trade risks the rest of the world can’t (as the rise in business flowing from US demonstrates). That does require co-presence and time and the serendipity of bumping into the right person at the right time. And that in turn will require us to get back to our offices at some stage. Not tomorrow and maybe never again five days a week. But soon, and for long enough to see and be seen.
