Why Specialty Lines is so special in the insurance sector

Adrian Jenner loves a few different things in life. He loves the obvious: his wife and two kids, Ella and Oli. He loves the not-so-obvious (and, in this case, the sometimes painful): Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club. And he loves what, let’s face it, is not always so lovable: his job, Head of Specialty Lines at Zurich UK.

“Yeah, seriously,” says a smiling Adrian – better known as A.J. – on a recent Teams call. “It’s just so interesting and it encompasses so many different things that it never gets dull or routine. I get up every morning and say to myself, ‘I’m looking forward to going to work today because I don’t know who I’m going to meet or what I’m going to do.’ It sounds corny, but I really love it. It’s so divergent.”

For those not in the know, Specialty Lines are a group of products available through Commercial Insurance and includes coverages like marine, Directors & Officers insurance (D&O), Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Accident & Health (A&H), cyber and travel disruption. So his role is technical on the one hand – and can be a handful for outsiders to grasp – but thoroughly fascinating on the other. Hence the love.

“In recent years, Specialty Lines has been a focus area for profitable growth across CI and is a valuable component to maintain a balanced portfolio,” says Sierra Signorelli, the CEO of Zurich’s Commercial Insurance. “And, look, the name is a giveaway: This area definitely requires special skills. Our diverse and highly respected underwriting teams have deep technical knowledge of niche product lines combined with commercial business acumen. The expertise and market-facing capabilities shown by A.J. and his team are a testament to the success we have enjoyed in this area and the significant future opportunities we see going forward.”

And for Specialty Lines, it’s all about looking forward. “We sell insurance products to people and businesses to protect them from a situation that they might not have thought about,” A.J. continues, with maps of various big city marathons in the background of his home office in the UK. (He also loves running, by the way, and completed the London Marathon earlier this year.) “If something does happen, they need to get back on their feet quickly, and our products provide them with that reassurance and support. So I laugh when I hear that insurance is the so-called ‘boring’ branch of financial services, because inside it’s incredible, right?”

Right, indeed, though when he was young, insurance was never his dream career. In fact, he originally aspired to go into law enforcement, but he received some sage counsel from a Sussex police chief years ago. The officer told the teenager not to come into the force just yet and to instead get some real-world experience and re-consider in his 20s. “He said that an 18-year-old is not prepared to knock on the door of a parent on a Saturday night to tell them their child has been killed in a car crash, and that he lost too many young recruits because they couldn’t handle the stress of the job. That was good advice.”

Only while doing an apprenticeship, following work experience from college, did A.J. become enamored with insurance – so enamored that he left college and never looked back. “I just fell in love with the energy and the passion and the vibe of the insurance marketplace,” he says.

He worked for several different companies in London before joining Zurich in 2018. Since then, Specialty Lines has grown into a USD500 million-plus business in the UK, which A.J. describes as a “big opportunity.”

Part of that opportunity is putting A.J. in front of clients, where he’s happiest. After all, he says, “without the client we don’t have a business proposition.” Just in the last few weeks and months, he and a team of three others onboarded a new customer – a large semiconductor firm – after being invited to a request for proposal and won the million-dollar-plus deal. He also met with a major customer to discuss D&O policy, among other things. (Earlier in the year, he spoke at their internal stakeholders ESG/Climate & Sustainability Day to talk about Zurich’s stance on climate change as well as the underwriting views of risk and opportunity.) And at the end of November, he met with a long-standing and strategic customer to discuss Zurich’s outlook on all things D&O related. He was actually challenged by the client on why Zurich had not reduced the premium in line with market rates. “I really enjoy these interactions,” he says, “as we’re able to bring alive – supported by our broader portfolio – pricing, claims and forward-looking risk challenges that give us the insight into the risk landscape and justify our pricing and long-term view of their risk. It was a robust conversation, but at the end of the meeting the client was grateful and considerate of our stance, and values the long-term outlook.”

D&O is one of A.J.’s specialties within Specialty Lines. “That’s my passion,” he says. D&O is when a company and its directors are accused of wrongdoing, with insurance provided to both the company and individual directors. It ends up being quite personal. “It’s one of those Trojan Horse kind of products,” A.J. continues. “When you get a meeting with a company, they’re often interested in other general lines of insurance, but eventually the one that really gets their attention is D&O because their personal wealth, personal brand and reputation are at risk. So when we meet the C-suites and we meet the company secretary or general counsel, we can have real meaningful conversations about our product offerings, how we support by providing defense costs, how our claims team works and how we evaluate their risk. I find it interesting that you can take what is a quite dull insurance product and effectively bring it to life.”

Back around 2016, before A.J. joined Zurich, he had no aspirations to join the company. But slowly, his perception started to shift for the better when leadership changed at the Group level as well as in the UK, and he sensed a renewed sense of direction and purpose within the organization.

“I’m happy with what I’m doing now,” he says. “I recently said to Sierra on her visit to London, that I’ve got one of the best jobs in the UK, if not Europe. But what excites me is that there will be someone from Zurich who will say, ‘Hey, we’d like you to do this. It could be interesting.’ It’s not a bad journey for a boy with pretty humble beginnings, right? I’m proud of that.”

Photography: Joël Giroud