View from the top: Julie Wood, QBE North America

Julie Wood was named CEO of QBE North America, part of Australian insurer QBE Insurance Group Ltd., in September after serving as interim CEO since August. Based in Atlanta, she joined the company in January 2023 as group head of distribution after spending close to a decade at Marsh LLC, where she was a managing director and led the Southeast zone. Ms. Wood started her career at Zurich North America, underwriting mergers and acquisitions business. In 2020, she was named one of the Business Insurance Women to Watch. Recently, Ms. Wood spoke with BI Deputy Editor Claire Wilkinson about her new role, challenges facing buyers and insurers, and the outlook for the market. Edited excerpts follow.

Q: What made you move back to an insurer after working on the broking side of the business?

A: It was a global opportunity. It was an opportunity to do something very different than I’ve done before. As a broker I worked at Marsh and competed against brokers but really hadn’t sat in a place where I could see the full landscape of different sizes, different value propositions, different ways in which they approached the market, and I was quite curious about that. It really worked well in that I liked QBE’s company size, I liked the leader, I liked the global piece. It was this opportunity to expand my knowledge, which has always been what’s motivated me each time to learn something, as well as to set yourself up for not necessarily the job right in front of you but maybe future jobs. 

Q: What direction are you looking to take QBE North America going forward?

A: A large part of it is about profitability. We’re always looking for long-term, profitable growth. That needs to be consistent and simple. I think we could be clearer on what our value proposition is to the customer as well as to the broker, understanding what will make us good trading partners, really advancing the general industry around how we identify risk, how we respond to quoting or declining. It goes all the way to the claim process, coverage, and what’s the contract that’s issued. Can we improve all that? Can we improve the experience that the broker has, the insured has, all along the way as they interact with QBE? The industry is trying to enhance the experience. I’d like to see that experience improve for us. 

Q: What lines of business does QBE write in North America?

A: QBE is set up in three divisions. We have a crop business, and we have commercial markets. That’s largely middle-market business. Also, there’s excess casualty business that’s nonadmitted paper and program. We write a fair amount of programs but with exclusive arrangements with different underwriting appetites. Thirdly is our specialties business with a lot of management lines, private D&O and public D&O, cyber, accident and health, and aviation. It’s a significant part of our business, and has a unique brand.

Q: It’s been a challenging time for insurers that write catastrophe-exposed property. Where do you see that business going forward?

A: Cat is challenging. That has been a consistent theme on both the brokerage and insurance sides of the business. I’ve talked to various colleagues that are in those areas, and some of them put it as one of the hardest years of their life. The past 12 months have been challenging between what we face globally around the sector as well as just the reinsurance changes and overall pricing and conditions. It’s difficult to find the right capacity because terms and conditions and pricing have changed. Property’s also a pretty traditional buy. Everyone for the most part is buying property insurance so there’s a fair amount of communication necessary there. For us, too, it exposes some volatility — and for everybody — around how is that managed, what is the class of business, what’s your aggregation? The importance of diversification across the portfolio is very evident when you have a challenging time like this.

Q: Is property a line of business that QBE wants to write going forward?

A: This is probably the big benefit of QBE. We have diversification by region across the globe but also within the portfolio in North America. Crop has property in it, but then you have commercial markets property and largely a casualty book in financial lines. To be a property/casualty writer, you have to write both the property and casualty, and we believe that. Clients need property solutions. It’s a core part of how they buy insurance and protect their balance sheet, so we will continue to write it. You have to write it in a manner in which you can be profitable, where the trade makes sense for the insured as well as for ourselves.

Q: Where do you see opportunities for growth in the specialty business?

A: Cyber is a big one. I don’t think you talk to anybody out there that’s not looking at bigger opportunities around cyber. We are also in the same place, cautious with some of the losses that cyber continues to present and the newness of the product that changes the landscape. We are going to continue to invest in that area and try to grow the product and how it’s serviced. Then we have a new excess casualty team. That’s a nonadmitted excess casualty group that’s a little over a year old. We’re going to continue to grow that. Then we get to construction. We just decided to invest and try to grow that largely because of macroeconomic factors and also a need in the market for bigger solutions and for capacity. Lastly, we are looking to stand up something more deliberate in health care in the near future. We’ll continue looking at industry verticals, not product line, as we go into the next year.

Q: Can policyholders expect rate increases to ease up?

A: I would say yes. They always expect them to. If they pay a big rate increase they certainly don’t expect to pay another big one. But this gets back to what’s the industry experiencing. If we have three years of massive cats in a property area, you’re probably going to start to face a capacity shortage, and it’s a supply-and-demand issue, and you have reinsurance. All sorts of components lead into rate on rate. But, yes, I think they are all hoping, and we see the slowdown of rate increases in certain lines of business.