Jim Damonte's commentary in feature article "E&S Leaders Embrace the Risky Future"

One newer insurer, Upland Specialty, formed in September 2020.   “There were a number of new carriers that came to market in the 2020-2021 timeframe but we decided to get together and build an insurance company because wholesale and E&S were very much in our backgrounds,” said Jim Damonte, president of insurance operations, who prior to helping start Upland Specialty served as a senior managing director at Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions Division.   Damonte says that since day one the “overall flow of submission activity is just absolutely beyond robust. I mean, in 20-plus years I had never seen such a huge influx of submissions and there’s just no quit to it.”

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For Upland, being new means “you don’t have all these legacy liabilities issues to be as concerned about,” he said. Also being new opens the door for entrepreneurial focused talent, he added.  “We kind of fall in an interesting spot whereby we are attracting underwriters and underwriting teams that are pretty entrepreneurial in nature, but they still have solid recognition that they’re likely better as part of a team. So in lieu of someone starting an MGA, they have the talent and the entrepreneurialism to likely do that, but they recognize the benefit of being part of a broader team and in being more sophisticated with how they handle risk and trade as underwriters.”

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To view the entire article, click here.

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