14 September 2016 Insurance

Argo benefits from talent shed during deal frenzy

International insurer Argo Group is well placed despite challenging times in the market, according to Mark Watson, chief executive officer at Argo Group.

Watson pointed out that in 2015 there seemed to be a presumption in the market that, in order to survive, participants needed to get bigger, prompting a rash of mergers.

At Argo however, Watson said he took the view that the company did not need to go down this route, pointing out instead that Argo had built a good platform and did not necessarily need to buy any other organisation.

Instead, he opted to move steadily on ahead.

Looking at where the company stands in 2016, Watson said that Argo Group has been able to take advantage of the merger & acquisition (M&A) activity elsewhere in the market by picking up some of the talented people shed by the newly merged entities that emerged from the M&A frenzy.

“Here we are in 2016 and we have more customers today than a year ago,” Watson added, “Our opportunity is to continue growing organically. We value original thinking and we’ve been growing more from innovation than just buying things and hiring people.”

According to Watson it’s easy to drive innovation once it’s started by a company; the hard part is getting people to understand that everyone can play a part in the process and that innovation itself is not just creating a new product. It can also be an improved way of doing something, he said.

Watson stressed that Argo Group will continue to keep the focus on planning though patience and underwriting discipline.

“Eventually we’ll win through. It’s so easy to make things look good for a year. But if you plan to be in the game for a long time then that doesn’t work very well.

“Over the last 15 years we’ve managed our way through hard and soft markets pretty well. We’ve built a good company with a good platform that’s now at a point where we can start to leverage it.”

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