Charles Williamson, Victor Insurance coverage Managers CEO, sat down with Insurance coverage Enterprise to talk about how his diversified profession trajectory set him up for his position with the MGA and the way he intends to steer the enterprise into new alternatives.

Now Victor Insurance coverage Managers (Victor) CEO, Charles Williamson (pictured) began within the insurance coverage trade in 1988 and has held a wide range of senior management positions, together with at huge identify insurers and what was on the time a brand-new enterprise.

The CEO has credited having the ability to put on numerous hats at totally different organizations — together with AIG and Crystal & Firm — for diversifying his skillset and shaping him into the chief he’s at present.

“Throughout my 25-year profession at AIG, I had a wide range of assignments, beginning out in massive account casualty, then migrating into gross sales and advertising and marketing earlier than finally transferring to private traces and client traces,” Williamson mentioned.

His final job at AIG was operating the buyer enterprise for the Americas, which included prolonged guarantee accident held private traces, amounting to an eclectic mixture of underwriting experiences.

Williamson then departed AIG to turn out to be a retail dealer, spending nearly 4 years with Crystal & Firm to grasp the distribution facet of the enterprise way more carefully. Following this beneficial expertise, his subsequent transfer was to create one thing totally new.

“I additionally co-founded an organization known as Vault, which was a private traces insurance coverage specialist, catering to high-net-worth clients — I used to be founder and CEO there for six years,” he mentioned.

When the chance to imagine the position of CEO at Victor Insurance coverage Managers emerged, Williamson noticed an opportunity to meld collectively his learnings to construct on a thriving enterprise.

“I’ve constructed a background round distribution on the one hand and underwriting on the opposite. The chance and Victor melded these disciplines collectively, and that simply felt proper for me,” he mentioned.

Victor’s independence, with backing from guardian Marsh McLennan, was additionally a draw.

“The autonomy to do my very own factor and construct a enterprise, based mostly on the technique that I laid out was thrilling,” he mentioned.

“It was a extremely good mixture of an impartial firm inside a giant group.”

Having assumed the position of CEO on July 31, Williamson drew inspiration from former Apple CEO Steve Jobs when he began within the position.

“I considered a quote that Steve Jobs as soon as mentioned, the place efficient leaders don’t rent nice folks and inform them what to do, however as a substitute, they rent nice folks, they usually inform us what to do,” he mentioned.

“I choose to be an enabler of actually good folks, versus facilitating each single determination or concept. It’s about enabling folks to do and be their finest.”

Refining the main focus

One of many important priorities of Williamson’s management is to deal with the areas which can be performing effectively and present nice potential.

“We’re adjacencies and the way we might spin up a further enterprise pretty simply with the experience, techniques, capabilities and capital companions that we’ve got.”

Expertise is a key space of focus for Victor too, and Williamson mentioned he’s a proponent of taking a thought-about method to funding.

“It takes administration time and a focus to construct the specs to check customized tech and validate it, which suggests they’ll’t focus our consideration on different issues,” he mentioned. “I’m difficult us to ensure every thing we spend our money and time on is completely essentially the most impactful and that saying ‘no’ to one thing is OK.”

“There’s plenty of whitespace”

As one of many oldest MGAs in America and the most important on the planet, Victor has developed key choices together with its flagship specialty applications enterprise, the nation’s largest stand-alone flood MGA, ICAT which makes a speciality of property disaster, in addition to its digital MGA, Victor Small Enterprise.

Altogether, the corporate handles round $4 billion in premium yearly.

Williamson is happy to increase past Victor’s present choices and create new alternatives for shoppers, he instructed Insurance coverage Enterprise.

“At the same time as huge as Victor is and as complete as our choices are, there’s plenty of whitespace, which is de facto thrilling for us,” he mentioned “We’re not likely in healthcare, we’re additionally not in building or actual property in a giant manner.

“[There’s also] hospitality, transportation, power, the issues which can be type of traditional MGA lessons of enterprise.”

The corporate will deal with rising its skilled roster, with attracting the appropriate expertise set to be essential for ahead momentum.

“We’re actively a wide range of acquisition alternatives”

Alongside extra natural areas of growth, Victor can also be banking on its acquisitive urge for food.

“We’re actively a wide range of acquisition alternatives,” Williamson mentioned.

Whereas there are none which have met their standards but, the CEO pressured that behind the scenes, the search continues they usually hope to discover a good match.

“We’re again in that sport, on the lookout for these acquisition alternatives that make us a greater purchase by way of product underwriting experience, techniques, platform distribution,” he mentioned.