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* the same week as Steve Pappas, who was our Accountant back then.
Sometimes Honan staff refer to me as “The Cleaner” - I make problems go away. This is not my material, it’s from the movie The Assassin!
I made the move up to Queensland at the start of 2018 after living in Melbourne for 16 years. Six of these years were spent at Honan running a corporate book of local and global clients which moved into a National Placement Manager role for Property & Casualty insurance. Originally from Queensland, I had some experience here and knew the market. It was an exciting opportunity to help build the Honan brand in Queensland and challenge myself to grow the business and run it like my own.
I love the Queensland lifestyle and spending time with my two boys, Connor (8 years) and Kade (6 years). They are both little Richos and their cheeky personalities certainly keep me on my toes!
Building on the foundations Chris Glass established in the 10 years prior, my role involves overseeing Honan’s Brisbane office and contributing to the culture by being another senior manager offering experience and mentoring others.
The purpose of the role was to develop Honan’s Global & Corporate portfolio in Queensland. Since then, I’ve grown the team of one (myself) to four, with more growth to come. We have generated an expanding portfolio of business, which has been really satisfying to see.
I gain a lot of satisfaction from working on complex corporate and global client portfolios, particularly because I like picking insurance programs apart to see what needs fixing or cleaning up!
Another key part of my role is building relationships with insurance suppliers, who are trusted advisors and skilled professionals. They enable us to secure better outcomes for our clients, which is especially important in today’s hard insurance market where the demand for certain types of insurance exceeds the supply.
TIME is the most important factor in the hard insurance market now. The hard market means there is a limited supply of insurance for certain exposures, and where it does exist, it is expensive. If our clients provide us with a lot of lead time, this enables us to analyse their risk exposures, explore a range of options and alternative risk transfer methods. This ultimately leads to a better outcome for our clients and insurers.
COVID-19 has had a profound impact on the insurance market, and risk exposures, products, and insurer offerings have evolved in response.
At Honan, I believe we are always staying ahead of the curve, and this is unbelievably motivating. We think outside the box to develop the right solutions, we know the products and we have the industry knowledge to stay relevant as our clients’ trusted advisors.
Having exposure to global multi-national programs has been a really rewarding experience. We work with broking partners from all around the world. Collaborating to solve problems for mutual benefit and learning about different cultures in the process have taught me so much over the years.
The difference in time zones isn’t so good though!
I’ll be focused on presenting things in a different light, continuing to leverage data and analytics to strengthen client submissions to insurers (particularly Catastrophe or Natural Hazard data), and challenging conventional ways of thinking.
