Christopher WIlliams:

[00:00:00] The fact that we've got four or five offices in New York because we've got four or five of our companies there. There may be some marginal savings in terms of real estate, but to give those businesses the independence and let them grow the way they have that far outweighs that cost saving. You potentially make banded together.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:00:15] We are collectively a hell of a lot stronger than you trying to grow your business individually. Three times in my life I've gone against my gut instinct and three times have bit me in the. We have.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:00:36] So today we're joined by Chris Williams, chairman of International Business at Tokyo Marine Group, one of the largest and most respected insurance organizations in the world. Chris has spent decades at the forefront of transformation in the insurance industry. He first joined Tokyo Marine through the acquisition of HCC in 2015, and has since helped lead the company's expansion into more than 40 countries. Under his leadership, international business has grown from just a small fraction of earnings to over 75% of revenue today. He's been involved in navigating multi-billion dollar acquisitions, integrating diverse cultures across continents, and shaping the company's strategy as to tackle some of the biggest risks facing business and society today. Chris, not only brings global perspective, but also a deep understanding of how legacy companies reinvent themselves for the future while staying true to their values. Chris, it's an honor to have you here on Reading Change.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:01:27] Thanks, Matt. I'm, uh, pleased to be here.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:01:29] So, Chris, let's start with when you were CEO of HCCA Houston Insurance Company. What that company did was specialty insurance, and when we first started working together, I had no idea what specialty insurance is. You, you'd, uh, tell me stories. It's like, really? You insure that? Mm-hmm. So could you explain specialty insurance and maybe give us some interesting examples that nobody would think of?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:01:54] Well, first of all, you're not the only person in the world that gets confused about what specialty insurance is, and in it, in its most simple form, specialty insurance to my mind, is the business that requires some individual. Skill and judgment in terms of writing the risk. And to give you an example of businesses that do not fall into that, uh, category, if you think of auto insurance today, you, you plug in, you know, the driver's record, you plug in the type of vehicle you try, plug in where they're located, and a number spits out.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:02:28] Specialty insurance is a little bit, uh, different to that in that there are, it's, it's not as formalized as that. And there are a lot of, there is a lot of skill and judgment that goes in right in the business that can be from things as diverse as, uh, ensuring a particular athlete who might be a quarterback for one of the teams, ensuring him for disability insurance. It could be for ensuring, um, some movie actor, uh, that they're going to show up. When they're meant to, to, uh, to make a movie all the way to more things that we get used to. And that is, you know, with all of the green energy that we're, we're all kind of fortunately moving in direction of ensuring some of those products.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:03:12] Wind farms, unfortunately, the blades of those wind farms have been known to come off. Now, whether that's specialty or just bad luck, I'm not sure, but you have a whole diverse type of products that fall into that category. And so where, where we've tried to cut our niche is to focus on lines of business where there really is a, a skill and judgment involved in underwriting the risk rather than simply plugging it into a, uh, computer program and spitting out a number.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:03:42] What's the most unusual insurance policy that you think people would be surprised to, to know that you underwritten?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:03:51] We, um, have written those types of coverage for Yeah. Event cancellation. I mean, I, I, I could, I could go all the way back. Uh. Great Frank Sinatra, where we were writing disability insurance on him, and there was a, a condition that he wore a flack uh, vest when he was on stage.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:04:12] We've ensured the Rolling Stones for multiple years, where in certainly the last 10 to 15 years, a condition of the policy is that there is a heart specialist backstage. So there are a whole host of those. Individual type things that happen. And then you have, uh, corporations that are going through some significant m and a and there may be an unusual tax liability that potentially is sitting out there and that company or the acquirer w ants to make sure that when they do the acquisition, they're not gonna get tagged with some massive tax bill because of whatever's happened in the past. And so we've been able to create insurance to cover that tax potential, tax liability in the event that something like that happens. So it's, uh, it, it's wild and varied. I mean, it's, it's, it's all over the map.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:05:05] So Frank Sinatra, the, what, what was that example?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:05:09] If you remember the, uh, way back when there was, uh, there was, uh, alleged mafia connections with him. And the, uh, the, uh, thesis was that he was gonna get bumped off. He had to, uh, to wear a, a slack jacket under his, uh, under his, uh, shirt. Like a bulletproof vest. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's amazing. I had no idea. And, uh, these are old ones, but Sammy Davis Jr. Was renowned for when he, uh, was asked to do an encore. He would only do an encore if he was paid in cash before he came back on stage. And, uh, if, uh, if the envelope didn't come on the door, he wasn't coming out the door.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:05:50] Amazing. The stories that you've got.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:05:53] Bill Walton, uh, we insured him for disability insurance many, many, many years ago, and he went out with a, a injured ankle, which we paid the claim on. This has now changed, but he subsequently came back a couple of years, uh, because it was meant to be permanent and total disability. He came back a couple of years later and, uh, we insured him again, but we excluded his ankle. Heaven forbid he goes down again and they said it wasn't his ankle, it was his foot. So we paid out. Again, you, you learn as time goes on to be a little bit more specific as to what you're excluding and what you're not. Uh, not excluding, not covering.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:06:33] Those are great stories. Uh, but's so important to our overall interview here. So here's, I guess the question of the hour is how does an outsider, an Australian turned American, who's running an American business. Get bought by a Japanese business that is virtually a hundred percent internally focused. How does that individual help turn that company into an international juggernaut?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:07:04] Well, first of all, I, I decided. You are giving way too much credit to me for that happening, and, and I, I, I can give you the history on that, which helps frame it a little bit. In the early two thousands, the Japanese market had gone through a fairly extensive consolidation where companies had been buying each other. Tokyo Marine is or was, and continues to this day to be the largest insurer in Japan, and number two and three aren't still as big as Tokyo Marine. And the management at the time made the decision very rightly that they needed to diversify out of Japan. So. Japan, as you know, is subject to very extreme weather.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:07:43] And if there weren't typhoons or what have you there, you had a good year. If there were, you had a bad year. So in the first instance, they started off by starting a reinsurance company in Bermuda called Tokyo Millennium Re, and that by definition gave some diversification because they were writing business. All over the world. They obviously didn't write Japanese business, but they wrote Japanese, uh, non-Japanese business. So that started off the diversification and, and gave, uh, Tokyo Marine a, a broader look at what was going on around the world. And obviously in the event that something bad happened in Japan, one was hoping that that didn't translate to around the world.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:08:20] So fast forward, they started a series AC of acquisitions. They bought kiln, uh, one of the significant Lloyd's uh, syndicates in London. They bought Delphi in the us. They bought Philadelphia Insurance Company. They bought HCC, which was a company that I was running, uh, while we bought. Pure, um, a very significant, uh, high net worth insurer here in the us and likewise we're doing that around the world as well, not perhaps to the scale that we did in the us And the simple reason being that the US is the biggest insurance market in the world by a significant margin.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:08:54] So it was logical that that's where the expansion would take place. My involvement started in 2015 when, uh, Houston based HCC was acquired. Uh, continued running that business for them for a couple of years, and then, uh, was asked to transition across out of HCC to become co-head of their international business. So that was 2018. And I think what's happened since then, we, we had, and have quite a federated model. Uh, and in that, what I mean is we buy these, what we believe are great businesses, and we think it's a major mistake to try to squeeze all of those businesses into one funnel. Having, having them all operate exactly the same because all of the businesses are very, very different.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:09:40] Now, you could argue that that may not be the most efficient approach, but in terms of growing those businesses, but in terms of profitability, in terms of employees, in terms of the product offering, it's really been a great formula. So I was, uh, as I said. Started more actively involved in that, uh, when I, we became part of the group. I think if I look at where we sit today with a significant, uh, percentage of our profits coming from international business, we've been able to get those businesses together. We've been able to get them to talk to each other. That in itself kind of sounds intuitive, you would think that's easy to do. In a funny way, COVID helped us jumpstart that and that whole process.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:10:23] I was very proactive through COVID, ensuring that our different group companies around the world had the same. Philosophy or the same reaction to claims that were inevitably coming in. I mean, I talked earlier about event cancellation. There wasn't an event in the world that wasn't canceled through COVID, and so that was obviously a pretty stressful time for us, including by the way, the Olympics that were in Japan, which has even added to that. What was going on, I think. Ward, the, the stage was set in the early two thousands, and I think what I'm most proud of is being able to exercise on that and bring the group together where we have had this terrific growth and now we're in, you know, 40 plus countries, um, all around the world.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:11:12] What, what was the biggest challenge in, in this? This must have been a massive headwind to get from almost all international earnings to very diversified internationally.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:11:21] That's a, that's a good question, Matt. I think a couple of things. First of all, the businesses that we acquired were terrific businesses. They were very profitable. They'd been in business for quite some time. Not all of them, but a very large percentage of them had been publicly traded. So they were used to all of the, the things that running a public company bring with it. So that wasn't necessarily new to them, but it was new that we had, uh, Japanese laws and regulations that we had to comply to. But I think we were able to leave those businesses keep running the way they were.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:11:58] We were able to get buy-in from the CEO saying, you are now part of, in today's numbers a $75 billion company, we can bring more to the table than just buying your company. It was a, it was an education process. It was getting buy-in from those CEOs to say that. Banded together, we are collectively a hell of a lot stronger than you trying to grow your business individually. We had some great successes, as I said, through COVID. Uh, we managed our way extremely well through that, despite the fact that we had a very. Significant growth loss. We had fortunately, quite a bit of reinsurance behind it and that started it. And I think the momentum then built on that where simple things where one insurance company may be talking about, we've gotta put a new policy administration system in, rather than just running off to all the vendors and saying, who's been the best one?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:12:55] All of a sudden they realize that their other CEOs. It obviously confronted these situations in the past as well. Where, where have you done, who, who was good, who was bad? Have you been able to outsource this? What have you done here? What have you done there? So it, it's not really rocket signs, but it was, it was breaking those walls down and getting the lines of communication going. And I think today we are far more unified and far more consistent in how we, uh, how we go about things.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:13:24] One of the things, when you talk about the number of acquisitions, traditionally when you think of m and a, you think, well, the person who's running the, the company will stay there for a couple years, take the money and run. Yeah. And I know that that has not been the. The history with Tokyo Marine. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:13:43] Yeah. I mean, and, and in one degree, you know, one extent, well, this goes back to HCC days. I mean, if you remember HCC, we did something like 50 acquisitions over the 50 years, 52 years, the company's been around in very, very rare situations. The principles. Have stayed on with those businesses. Obviously many of them have now got to retirement age and moved on my thesis at that time, and I think Tokyo Marines continued it is that we wanted those people to make them feel like they were still running their business. Make them feel as though they've still got significant input as to how they drive it.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:14:20] But just the fact that they're under the umbrella of this much bigger company. You don't need to buy as much reinsurance. We've got some buying power with vendors. We can cross sell product where we don't have product that we didn't have expertise in. And so I think what we've done is we've been able to really advance that. If I look at where we are today, without exception, all of the big significant acquisitions. The, the principles are either still there or they've retired and now have become advisors to us. And that is so important because I think you, they, they obviously want to continue to be part of it. They want to be seeing it grow.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:15:00] And as I said earlier, we have been able to grow all of the businesses, both in terms of top line, bottom line in terms of number employees in terms of what we're doing in their local communities. And that doesn't always happen with m and a. As you know, people come in and. Take an ax to it and say, you know, we're gonna eliminate X thousand positions and do this and do that when we do acquisitions. I would be in the office of the acquiring company the day it was announced saying, first of all, we are not eliminating positions. We are not streamlining offices. We want you to keep doing what you're doing. We want you to keep doing it well. And you've got a now a very significant partner sitting behind you that can help you grow your business. And I think history would indicate that we've been very successful at doing that.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:15:47] Going back to the early days, what were some of the cultural challenges where you've got a very, I, I assume the leadership team was primarily Japanese to where today it's very internationally diverse. Yeah. What was that shift like culturally and what were some of the unexpected challenges there?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:16:04] So, Matt, it was a, it was an interesting story I'll tell here. When, when we first became part of Tokyo Marine, I wanted to ensure that we had a, a seat at the table. So for the first 18 months, perhaps a little bit longer, I actually flew to Japan every month from Houston, and it was too. Get to know the people better. You know, you get to know them somewhat through the, uh, m and a process, but it was get to know them. But it was also to try to understand the system, how it works there. And one of the most surprising things is in the, in the very early days, I would go to some of these meetings and there would be a very significant decision being made.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:16:47] Um, you know, we're gonna expand into this country, we're going to buy this particular business. And it would seemingly go through very quickly. I remember saying to one of my colleagues, I said, you know, it's amazing to me these big topics get, I won't say rushed through these businesses, these meetings, but they seem to go quite quickly. But what I came to found out, and this is when I knew I'd been accepted by them. All of decisions were made in the pre-meeting meeting. The actual meetings was papering it, documenting it, and making sure that it was recorded appropriately. So as soon as I got invited to the pre-meeting meetings where all the meat of the conversation would take place, I knew I'd been accepted.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:17:31] But the flip side of this integration is I remember when you came to me and said. HCC is being bought by this Tokyo Marine, and we've gotta come up with a way to smooth that with our employees. And that's gotta be true with all, all the acquisitions. But how, tell us how you handled this totally American company. Except for you being Australian, uh, being bought by a Japanese company, which nobody understood the culture. Yeah. And got almost everybody to stay. Well, the

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:18:04] post merger integration process that Tokyo Marine go through is very consistent with how they do things. It's very well thought out. It's very well documented and, and it's a playbook and, and our playbook is, I mean, I, I'll use HCC as the example because obviously I lived that dream. Going through the process. We spent many, many hours talking about our philosophy of the business, our philosophy of growth. Our philosophy is not, not growing in certain environments. Where do we see the business going? We never discussed price. The acquisition, it was not, it was, we'd had probably six or eight meetings and finally when we obviously had had realized that this would be a great fit, then they came and said, well, you know, we think it's worth X and you know, blah, blah, blah.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:18:58] So it was getting an understanding of the business, getting an understanding of the people. And we have had situations where, and I can cite. Three of them that I've actually been involved in, that we walked away from because we didn't feel as though there was a fit with the people and with us. It wasn't that they wanted to take their check and go and work on their golf game. It was, they just had a very, this is my business. It's always gonna be this business, and I really don't care what Tokyo Marine do, but I want to, I wanna get a check from you. Well, that obviously doesn't sit very well, so we've walked away from deals where that's happened. But what we have done is we've been incredibly proactive, so it's very choreographed.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:19:41] We're right from, you know, when we go through the due diligence process to when we get to the announcement process, to who do we have in front of the employees? And when, again, going back to the HCC example. Within 48 hours of the announcement being made, we were in front of our offices in, in London, all across the US and I think you may have been involved, ward helping me with put that deck together. What we went around went around saying, you know, it's still yes business as usual, but have a guess what, instead of a $7 billion company, now it's $75 billion company. And that should give you comfort by the way. It's not gonna be any retrenching. We're not consolidating offices. We just, we we're gonna push on and do what we've done and the, and as I said, it could be a little bit more efficient, but the fact that we've got four or five offices in New York, because we've got four or five of our companies there, there may be some marginal savings in terms of real estate and all the rest of it, but to give those businesses the independence and let them grow the way they have.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:20:43] That far outweighs that cost saving you potentially make. So it's a very formulaic deal provided the company kind of ticks the box in terms of how we see them going forward and how we see them fitting in within the group.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:20:56] You, you touched on it briefly on walking away from a couple deals where culturally it just wasn't a fit. What's your leadership philosophy to really maintain culture across such a. Geographically diverse organization,

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:21:08] but you know, obviously different cultures, different ways of looking at things. It will sound rather corny to say this, but the Japanese have an incredible respect for people. Very, very polite, which is good or bad news because when sometimes things happen that we do need to make change, they send a westerner in to make those changes rather than bring the hammer down. You know, I think we have to adopt, I mean as, as an example, we are now, I think the second or third biggest insurer in Brazil. We've built a fabulous business there. One of the reasons we've had, the successes we do have had is that we want local management. We don't want to send someone for Japan into manage.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:21:50] This goes back to an earlier question. What's part of the success? We certainly have expats that we move around the world to put into those offices so we get an understanding of what's going on. Where that's been immensely helpful is we have certain countries where we may not have been writing a certain type of insurance, and the expat can work in one of the offices and say, and I'm just using directors and officers liability insurance as an example. We were not writing that in Asia to speak of. We moved some people, uh, to Singapore. We established a center of excellence. We're now run one of the larger writers of d and o in, uh, in Asia. So by having those expats, they are able to not only get to understand what the local company is doing that they've been sent to, the more important.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:22:40] They'll know what some of our other companies around the world are not doing, and therefore we can take product to them. So it's a very good system, but as I said, the, the, the leadership is always a, a local, local person or local management team.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:22:54] Clearly, you've been very successful in your career. A lot of the listeners of this podcast are executives or up and coming executives. What advice. If you could rewind the clock 30 years, what advice would you give to a younger version of yourself with high aspirations?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:23:09] Three times in my life I've gone against my gut instinct and three times have bit me in the ass as you work your way through business. I think intuitively, you know. You think is gonna work and sometimes you get influenced and, and as I said, after it happened to me the third time, I haven't done it again. And that was a long time ago. I might add, I think you gotta follow your gut, being around the block, understanding things, understanding product, understanding people, but. As I said, it sounds intuitive, but it, it, it really, I think, holds you in very, very good standard. May, you may not win the popularity award at the time if you follow your gut, but at the end of the day, I think you'll be proven to be right.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:23:52] What, what were the three times that you didn't follow your gut?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:23:57] Um, one of them was, uh, in regard to, we had a, this was way, way back when we had a business in London. The boss I had at the time said, I want you to fly over and fire that guy. And I said, look, I think this is too early. I don't think we've seen it enough. And sure enough, I, you know, he said, no, I want him fired. So I fired him. Inevitably the guy turned out to be a rockstar. So, you know, it was, it, it was a bad, uh, a bad situation. And, and generally it's, it's around people or sometimes lines of business was a, there was a line of business that I'd never been in love with in the US and one of our guys said, look, this is different.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:24:35] And you know, we think we've really got the mousetrap down. And he kind of convinced me that we did, you know, we lost, you know, 6 million bucks or whatever. It was just, it was, it, it, it went exactly the way I thought it would. So, and quite frankly, I can't remember what the third one was. It was something to do with people, but I, I, I can't remember what it was, but yeah, I, I knew at the time that, no, I don't feel good about that. And, and, and inevitably it, it wasn't. I remember what the third one was. It was a, a, a business that we'd acquired that this was back in HT C days, that the principal said, I'm absolutely here for the long haul. You know, I wanna sign on, blah, blah, blah. And now guys that were managing the process, I said, I just don't have a good feel of this.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:25:19] This is guys committed. I said, you know, let's get an employment contract. We need him here for a period of time. The ink wasn't dried on the deal. And he said, you know, I'm gonna head off. And again, it was just. Yeah, I, I didn't have a good vibe and it, and it proved to be right.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:25:33] Well, you, you, you're an expert in risk assessment, so I think your, your gut intuition is, is probably spot on most of the time. What, what's an example of the biggest risk that you've ever taken in your personal life, business, you know, whatever.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:25:48] So, at the prime age of 25, married for one year. Working in Australia, having, uh, worked in Lloyd's for a few years. Before that, I was offered a job to work in, uh, in Canada, which was meant to be for five years. At the age of 25, I was coming over as president of that business. I, uh, landed in Toronto with my relatively new wife and the week before I arrived, the guy I was working for. Lost the largest account that they had. And so I had the pleasure at the age of 25, taking a business that had a hundred plus people down to about 20 people. You grow up in a hell of a hurry having to do that.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:26:31] Wow.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:26:31] Yeah. That, that was not a great experience. But I tell you what, at School of Hard Knocks, it's a great teacher.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:26:37] You know, Matt asked. In another way, but what kind of advice would you give a young person who wants to move into the international insurance world?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:26:50] I think, Ward, I me an to speak to the insurance industry specifically. I mean the, the US is the biggest market in the world and will be for the foreseeable future, however. There are other businesses outside of America and there are other risks outside of the us. Uh, a lot of geopolitical, uh, you know, there's things that, that, you know, we may not necessarily think of day to day here. I would strongly encourage to get some international experience. As I said earlier, I was fortunate enough as quite a young guy to be sent to Lloyd's. I worked there for a couple of years in the seventies. Moved to North America for what was to be five years. And, um, you know, here I am, 40 plus years, I'm still here.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:27:30] So I've been in the business for 50 years, but I have worked around the world. I love the us. All of our kids have been born in the US and, and this is where we'll be for, you know, the foreseeable future until the end, I guess. But I really would encourage them to go and get some international experience and work outside of the US work in Europe or Asia or Australia or wherever the heck it is, just to understand some of those cultures. Fortunately, uh, even though we've been in the US a long time, the vast majority of the reinsurance business I did, which was where I started. Was, uh, in continental Europe. So I spent a significant amount of time back and forward to Europe, to the uk. I think that that experience holds you in very good stead.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:28:17] I'm sure Tokyo Marine employees are gonna be listening to this. What advice other than international experience would you give them to help develop their leadership skills?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:28:27] I think we're a very complicated company, writing a lot of very different lines around a business around the world. I would suggest that they do as much homework understanding what we do and where we do it. And that again, sounds fairly straightforward, but we do a lot of very different lines of business in different ways in different countries. You're not gonna become a expert in all of them in the same way. I'm not, but I did have and do have a general knowledge of most of the insurances we write. And if I don't, I'll certainly find someone that can get me up to speed quickly.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:29:05] I would suggest that you really study what Tokyo Marine can do and see, once you understand that, what areas are you really interested in? You know, are you more interested in the analytical side? You know, the actuarial side? Are you more interested in underwriting? Are you more interested in the sales side of it? In other words, hone your skills, but understand the capabilities of the company and then go from there.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:29:31] You've seen employees that you thought had a lot of. Potential who after working with 'em for a while, you start to see, going back to your gut, you start to see that this isn't the right fit. They're very talented, but this isn't right for us. It's not right for them. How do you address that and how would you advise young people to, to, uh, be on the lookout for this?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:29:55] So my view on that ward is that generally it never ages. Well, if your instinct is that the person's not up to it, you're probably doing them a disservice and you're doing yourself a disservice by saying, I'll give it another year, or. You know, and there are some extenuating circumstances. People have things that happen in their life that obviously they're off balance for a while and you hope they get back on it. But generally, my view is that if, if you've come to the position or the decision that someone isn't going to make it, you better for them and you to say, look, you know, this isn't the area for you.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:30:30] We've got this position over here. Maybe something totally different. Obviously, if you'd like to have a shot at that, by all means do, but. If not, it's probably better you do something different. And as I said, it's, it's as painful as that is. I think it, it's, it's as helpful to the person it is to the, uh, company because really you're trying to push a square peg in a round hole and it, it, it, it never works.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:30:54] Now that, that's a really good point. It's, it's really shocking how oftentimes it's more. Satisfying for theming as, as for you, because they're not happy in, in the position most of the time. And it, and it just shows in their performance.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:31:08] Yeah. And if look, if, if they know they're kind of fighting Sydney Hall all the way, their heart's not in it. So now the flip side is you find a rockstar, some, you know, young woman or guy that's, uh, that's really moving up the line. I'm a huge proponent of giving them the training and the support that we do. We, we have a whole. Host of training programs at Tokyo Marine, which I will say we've enhanced significantly over the last 10 years, where we take our rising stars and make sure that we are giving them the, the rounded experiences, giving them, uh, assistance in areas that they may not be strong in.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:31:49] But the most important thing that does is as you bring these people together, they get to know each other. So as they move up the line, they know the counterpart in Singapore, the counterpart in Brazil, the counterpart part in New York or wherever it is. And that, I think, has held us in very good stead because we are now seeing. Some of those people that we put through these very senior training courses now rising to CEO positions, some of the people that were in those courses with them 10 years ago are likewise raising to similar positions. So I think it's, it, it's rounding out the skills for the individual, but it's also giving the individual contact with similar like-minded senior people all over the world. And, and I think we're, we're, we're doing a much better job at that than we did.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:32:40] Shifting gears a little bit, Chris, how did you meet Ward?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:32:47] So, HCC was a combination of many acquisitions. They operated in this somewhat federated model at that. That, uh, Tokyo and Marine does. But the messaging that we had to those companies was very inconsistent and where Wood was I immensely helpful was he helped us, our guardrails. He helped us kind of have one consistent message. And we were able to maintain the, uh, independence of these various businesses, but at the same time made them realize that they were part of something much bigger rather than just the line of business that they were running. So he was very helpful in that. We obviously were, you know, publicly traded and was doing quarterly calls, which were, were very helpful.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:33:36] What. Was extremely beneficial was after we ceased to be publicly traded in the us obviously part of a Japanese company, the employees were previously getting quarterly information. They were seeing how we were doing in various lines of business around the world. That information obviously wasn't flowing because it was now channeling into Japan and became part of, uh, a much bigger pot. We did, I guess, a version of quarterly, uh, earnings, but these were used internally. We kind of relaxed a little bit where we made some kind of more personalized stories. What was great in that area, and I think there was a little period of time where perhaps some of the HCC people felt a little bit disjointed.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:34:21] The benefit of doing that is that when we've done other acquisitions, we now have done similar things with those companies where mainly if they were publicly traded, whereas if they were publicly traded, we make sure that the CEO et all is, uh, getting information to their employees as if they were publicly traded. So they knew what was going on. So it was very helpful.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:34:44] Was there anything that was particularly memorable of y'all's work together?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:34:48] Yeah. There's one thing that sticks out very clearly. It was his and my love for wine and opera.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:34:55] And opera.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:34:56] And opera. That's true. We did, we had, we had, we had some wonderful opera experiences. My wife and I there with mores and we, yeah, that, that was, that was a bonus.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:35:07] It's great to work with people who you like.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:35:09] It is. It is.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:35:11] So, Chris, are there any questions that you thought we would ask that we didn't, that we need to?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:35:17] Yeah, I, I, I guess the one that I'd touch on Ward is that it, um, it's pretty easy to look at the success that we've had with our international business as we've, uh, as we've grown that. Um, one of the things that, that I think about quite a bit, and like I have multiple conversations with our CEO in Japan. We have this phenomenal business in Japan. I mean, we are, as I said, the largest insurer there. We have terrific people. We've got great product. It's very important to me and well to our CEO as well, that we don't forget that we, we do come from Japanese roots, but we also wanna make sure that they feel and continue to feel part of this team, that it's not just the international show.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:36:05] And so I think as I. Look at where we are today. We need to make sure that our Japanese colleagues are brought along on the same journey that we are on. We're all wearing the same jerseys. We all work for the same company. And I think there's a realization in Japan how important Japan is to us, how important it is for us to maintain that culture. But we need to make sure that our colleagues there and, and about half of our 40,000 people are in Japan. We wanna make sure that they're part of this exciting journey as well. And I think we're working our way through that. It's not perfect, but I think we're getting there. That's one of the things that I think about. Uh, obviously we want to continue to grow, not only in Japan, but outside, but that, that's something that, that I think of a little bit.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:36:55] What are some strategies that you're using to show the love back to Japan?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:37:02] In in the Japan system. The CEO rotates out after six years and then becomes chairman for six years. And we just very recently, literally in June of this year, went through our transition from the old CEO sat, who's now chairman to a Mass who is the new CEO. He is taking the view that I think he would like a slightly smaller management group. Rather than a a, a very large one, which has historically been the Japanese way.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:37:32] He wants that group to be a combination of both Japanese colleagues as well as international colleagues. Now we all know each other on a senior level, but I think working together I think is gonna be very helpful there because some of the issues that they deal in. Within Japan and not unique to Japan. I mean, we deal with them in other parts of the world. So I think that kind of cross culture or cross cross working together on a more structured basis, I think will help that a lot. And in fact, on leaving to Japan Friday. To attend a meeting this coming weekend where we're gonna be doing exactly that.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:38:11] I'll be our Japanese colleagues and a handful of our international colleagues sitting down saying, you know, kind of where are we going next? So I think it's, it, it started in a very positive way. We all have a huge respect for each other, so I think it, it's a very good step in the right direction.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:38:28] So you've always been at the forefront of risk. What do you see as the biggest risk in the next five to 10 years?

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:38:34] Couple of obvious ones, you know, which quite frankly, we don't have a whole lot of control over the geopolitical situation. Obviously the world is somewhat of a Tinder box at the moment. You know, who knows where that all goes? Not a lot we can do to control it. What we can do is make sure. We have enough diversification in our portfolio so that in the event a countries or certain countries, uh, are basically no fly zones where, where you can't do business, that we've got enough businesses coming elsewhere. That same philosophy applies to catastrophes. Obviously, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to look at the, the, uh, the cats that are occurring around the world with some climate change on an ever increasing basis.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:39:18] You know, how do we manage our way through that? If you think of what event over recent years has been a worldwide one, uh, COVID probably would be the most applicable, and we managed our way quite well through that. We, we had, you know, some significant losses in certain parts of the world. But again, if you look at the overall impact to the group, it was quite manageable. So our challenge is that portfolio management, making sure we're not too overweight in some particular area, and make sure we're not too underweight in, in certain areas. So it's kind of balancing that process and then, you know, how do we continue to grow? You know, when you've had the growth that we've had, it's, it's a pretty tall order to keep that pace going.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:40:03] Can we do that? Maybe we're not gonna do acquisitions for the sake of doing acquisitions. We, uh, would far prefer to keep our powder dry and react when the appropriate thing comes along. And as, as this business is a very, you know, cyclical business, as I said, I've been in it for 50 years and people have got incredibly short memories The p rices go up, prices go down, terms of conditions, tighten terms of conditions loosen, and there, there are times to put your foot down on the gas pedal and there's also times to take your foot off. So I think we bounce managed our way through that pretty well.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:40:36] Awesome. Chris, thank you so, so much for being a part of this. Uh, it's great to reconnect. We've known each other a long time and it's great to, uh, it's always great to talk with you. Now we have it memorialized in this podcast. Well, it's my pleasure.

Christopher WIlliams:

[00:40:53] Nice to see you guys.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:40:54] Thanks for listening to Rethink Change. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it and be sure to follow the show so you don't miss a single episode. If you're a disruptor looking to challenge the status quo and don't know where to start or what to do next, Penn eb aker can help find out more at Pennebaker.com.