Miller Insurance sets sights on expansion in Japan and South Korea as it continues to plough its APAC furrow
November 7 2024 by InsuranceAsia News
GIC-backed Miller Insurance is expecting to continue its recent rapid growth in its APAC Singapore hub with more people hired over the next year, as well as continued regional geographic expansion in Japan and South Korea, according to Ron Whyte, head of Miller Asia.
‘We’ve covered most of the product lines now, so it’s really about building teams,” he added.
“What’s interesting is that we had four registered people at this conference two years ago and we have 27 now,” he told InsuranceAsia News at this year’s Singapore International Insurance Conference (SIRC).
“We’ve been trying to build a hub in Singapore as part of a hub and spoke strategy, which involved Richard Broad joining as head of treaty, based here. There are seven of them now and they’ve had a great year.”
The broker established its Asia Pacific treaty team in September 2023 with a hire of a team from Lockton Re, led by Broad, who was previously head of reinsurance for Lockton APAC, alongside four others, Bruce Ford and Pei Nee Goi in Singapore and Jo Garnett and Hui Sin Low based in Malaysia.
Since then it has continued to expand its regional treaty presence, most recently with the hire of Mandy Phan from Guy Carpenter in July this year.
“We were just property fac four years ago. Now we’ve got marine, energy, cargo, financial and professional lines, credit and political risks, and sports & entertainment,” industry veteran Whyte continued.
Regional expansion
“Geographically yes we want to expand but we’re pretty measured about the way we go away it,” he added. “At the moment we’re in Japan and we’re expanding there and going deeper, adding non-marine and we’ll grow that out. We are a broker and we’ll look to add the agency side.”
“We’re opening soon in South Korea and we’ll build pretty deep there, and we’ve got some other plans in other territories to go to,” he added. “But we’re not in any hurry. We have long-term backing and the most important thing is if we do something we get it right. We get the right partner, the right people. We’re unashamedly extremely thorough about everything we do. Sometimes it feels as if we’re not moving that fast, but then I look up and as I said we were four just two years ago and now we’re 27, so we must be doing something right!”
“We have long-term backing and the most important thing is if we do something we get it right. We get the right partner, the right people. We’re unashamedly extremely thorough about everything we do.” Ron Whyte, Miller
Whyte said that both Japan and Korea are currently experiencing “extraordinary growth” in their broking markets.
“Japan- nothing ever moves dramatically fast there, but there are some quite significant changes coming and the role of the broker will be much greater. In Korea, the growth of the broking business is something like 20% a year. Actually, both of those economies are pretty flat, but they are very mature markets. Korea has insurance penetration levels akin to Western European levels, and the size of the non-marine market is similar to the UK, but the broking market is about a fiftieth of the size, so there is that potential, and that’s exciting.”
Specialty focus
Also speaking to IAN was Shaun Sinniah, global head of Reinsurance, who provided some wider context to the changes.
“Treaty is pretty nascent for Miller from the position we had prior to going into Willis at that point,” he said. “A lot of what people were trying to do was recreate that original magic by focusing on specialty lines business and niches in the market which are underserved by not only the global firms but also by the more challenger broker space. I don’t think we really have the intention to go after large global property cat programmes or for an Aon or a Carpenter. I think for us it’s more ‘where can we be meaningful to a limited number of cedants in a territory? Where can we go deeper rather than wider?’”
“With that comes international expansion,” Sinniah added. “And unlike other challenger brokers, I think Asia Pacific is the first cab off the rank, not the third or fourth. So it’s not a London to Europe strategy for us, it’s very much a London and Asia Pacific strategy.”
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