Engineering Communities: Paolo Cuomo

When Paolo Cuomo planned for a life designing and building tangible things - bridges, buildings, “real stuff” - he didn’t expect to fall for an industry that makes nothing you can touch. But in the grey areas of specialty risk and the human handshake of EC3, he found something else: a place where engineering discipline meets portfolio uncertainty, and where communities change careers.

In this episode, Paolo (Executive Director, Gallagher; co-founder of Instech London; Lloyd’s Lab founding team) traces the path from Imperial College engineering to McKinsey problem-solving to building businesses and communities that have shaped today’s insurance ecosystem. We talk about the real origins of “InsurTech” (and why he still loves “Instech”), London’s “unfair advantage” of proximity, and the very human reason insurance matters: it quietly enables progress - ship voyages, chip factories, sprinkler retrofits - then steps out of the spotlight.

We also get personal: the cost of doing too much, what a real priority list looks like, and why Paolo is calling 2026 “the Year of Paolo.” Underneath it all is a builder’s mindset: lay better foundations, connect people who should meet, and measure success by what stands years later.

In this conversation

• Engineering vs. insurance: structure, uncertainty, and where they clash, and complement
• Why more data sometimes adds confusion (lessons from the first InsureTech wave)
• Instech London’s beginnings, the hashtag wars, and the power of community
• London’s proximity effect: why EC3 creates serendipity other hubs can’t easily replicate
• MGAs as the innovation chassis: letting humans + tools ship value faster
• Insurance as quiet social good: sprinklers, cyber posture, and enabling big bets
• Focus, boundaries, and “The Year of Paolo”: doing fewer things, better
• Legacy: builder of communities, businesses, and relationships that last

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.

If these stories resonate with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a colleague or friend who still believes in the people side of this business.

You can also connect with Daniel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, recommend guests, or request a topic that you'd like to know more about.

Humanizing Insurance — one conversation at a time.

Changing Perspectives: Simon Hayes

When markets softened and box-ticking took over, Simon Hayes didn’t chase “cheapest.” He doubled down on stories that change perceptions.

From Royal Marines officer training to aviation broking at Lloyd’s, Simon learned early that insurance is a people business. The real leverage wasn’t a rate card, it was narrative: helping underwriters see the full picture, turning “distressed risk” into understood risk, and partnering beyond price.

Years later, a brutal redundancy could have closed the book. Instead, Simon started again, founding NextGen Communications, becoming a go-to voice for insurers and InsurTechs who needed more than press releases. He rode the early InsurTech wave, sat with founders who had product but no profile, and built campaigns that earned attention where it counts: with buyers.

This conversation is about resilience, relationship capital, and pride; about telling the truth well enough that the industry can stand up at a dinner party and say, “We oil the wheels of the world,” without apology.

Simon reminds us that PR, at its best, is not spin, it’s stewardship of trust. Claims are acts of restoration. Brand is the promise you keep when no one is watching. And the most durable growth still comes from helping first.

Whether you build products, place risk, or lead teams through change, this episode is a quiet masterclass in finding your value, showing your work, and staying human when the spreadsheet says otherwise.

What we cover

• Royal Marines to Lloyd’s: the people skills that outlast process
• Aviation broking and the “soft market” epiphany: stop selling cheapest, start selling partnership
• Storytelling that moves markets: closing the gap between Zimbabwe Airways and its peers by changing perception with facts
• PR as perception change (not vanity metrics): where outcomes actually matter
• Diversity then and now: why the market feels different, and what’s still missing
• Redundancy, reinvention, and the power of your network when the ground shifts
• InsurTech accelerators, funding waves, and how NextGen became a go-to in the niche
• Practical comms for insurers & InsurTechs: what to invest in when budgets are tight
• Pride at the dinner party: making the case for being in insurance
• Life beyond the inbox: small global teams, travel, golf dreams, and building a business you actually like

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone m

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.

If these stories resonate with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a colleague or friend who still believes in the people side of this business.

You can also connect with Daniel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, recommend guests, or request a topic that you'd like to know more about.

Humanizing Insurance — one conversation at a time.

Knight of the (Insurance) Round Table: David Clamp

When corporate life no longer fit, David Clamp didn’t just change jobs, he changed the way people in insurance connect.

After decades in engineering, tech, and banking, David found himself questioning whether his work still aligned with his values. What began as a career crossroads at 50 became a personal quest for purpose - and ultimately, the creation of Camelot Networks, a modern round table for insurance professionals.

In this episode of Humanizing Insurance, David shares that journey: from the sorting machines of Royal Mail to the boardrooms of JP Morgan, from the politics of big business to the freedom of building a network founded on authenticity, equality, and integrity.

He talks candidly about what it means to walk away from comfort, to rediscover purpose later in life, and to build something that helps others do the same. We explore the unseen technology that quietly powers legacy industries like postal services and insurance, the quiet dignity of doing the right thing when no one is watching, and the life-changing moment when Camelot’s purpose was reflected back to him in the most human way possible.

Throughout our conversation, David reminds us that the insurance industry isn’t about spreadsheets, products, or premiums — it’s about promises kept.
He speaks of claims not as transactions but as acts of restoration; of networks not as databases, but as communities that lift people up when they’ve been knocked down.

And at the heart of it all lies one simple, timeless belief: that helping others first is not only good ethics, it’s good business.

Whether you’re in insurance, technology, or any industry that sometimes forgets the people behind the process, this conversation is a quiet call back to purpose. It’s about rediscovering integrity as a guiding force, about finding the courage to leave the familiar behind, and about creating your own modern Camelot, wherever you happen to sit.

What we cover

• Royal Mail to JP Morgan: the through-line from engineering to insurance
• The “invisible tech” that keeps letters — and claims — moving
• Turning 50 and choosing purpose over politics
• Building Camelot: equals around a round table, no titles, no game-playing
• A powerful story of community showing up when it matters
• Ageism, reinvention, and pricing your experience without apologising
• Three-circle framework for finding your niche: market need × strengths × passion
• Integrity as strategy: doing what you say, helping first, walking tall

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.

If these stories resonate with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a colleague or friend who still believes in the people side of this business.

You can also connect with Daniel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, recommend guests, or request a topic that you'd like to know more about.

Humanizing Insurance — one conversation at a time.

Philosophy in Insurance: Bryan Falchk

What happens when you mix philosophy with insurance? You get a conversation that slows things down - that asks not just what we do, but why we do it.

In this episode, I sit down with Bryan Falchuk, founder of Insurance Evolution Partners, President & CEO of PLRB, author, TEDx speaker, and one of the genuinely good humans in our industry.

We talk about the strange and beautiful overlaps between philosophy and insurance - about control, perception, leadership, and the quiet discipline of doing the right thing, one day at a time.

Bryan opens up about his early fascination with problem-solving, the philosophical grounding behind his books The 50 75 100 Solution and Do a Day, and how those ideas show up in his leadership today. We dive into Stoicism, motivation, modern insurtech, and the simple truth that perception shapes everything, from customer experience to culture.

This isn’t a technical discussion. It’s about the humans behind the spreadsheets and strategies. It’s about how we think, how we lead, and how we make meaning in a business that’s built on uncertainty.

If you’ve ever wondered what philosophy has to do with insurance, or why thoughtful people stay in this industry for decades, this episode might give you a few answers, or at least better questions.

What we cover;

• The story of how Bryan first found his way into insurance (and why he stayed)
• How philosophy - and even a little accidental Stoicism - shapes his leadership and perspective
• The importance of perception in business and relationships
• The danger of hubris in both insurers and insurtechs
• Why “owning your 50%” changes everything
• And how doing a day at a time still matters when you’re running at full speed

A few moments to listen for;

• When Bryan and I talk about what “control” really means
• His take on what insurance enables in the world
• The part about people who hate you, and why that’s sometimes a good thing
• How philosophical ideas like presence and perception play out in claims and leadership

Links & Resources

• BryanFalchuk.com
  — Bryan’s site, books, and TEDx talks
• Future-of-insurance.com
  — for his industry series
• "The 50 75 100 Solution" and "Do a Day" — available wherever you buy books

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.

If these stories resonate with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a colleague or friend who still believes in the people side of this business.

You can also connect with Daniel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, recommend guests, or request a topic that you'd like to know more about.

Humanizing Insurance — one conversation at a time.

Brewing a Legacy: The Story of Edward Lloyd

with Howard Benge, Director of The Insurance Museum

Three hundred years before global markets and skyscrapers, there was a man with a coffee pot and an idea.

Edward Lloyd didn’t come from money. He wasn’t an underwriter, a broker, or a banker. He was a London coffee-house owner in the late 1600s, serving merchants, ship captains, and traders in a city still rising from the ashes of the Great Fire. Yet from his small café on Tower Street, and later Lombard Street, Lloyd built something extraordinary: a meeting place where information, trust, and risk came together.

In this episode of Humanizing Insurance, Daniel Grimwood-Bird sits down with Howard Benge, Director of the Insurance Museum, to rediscover the real man behind one of the most famous names in insurance. Together they explore the world of 17th-century London - a city of coffee houses, maritime trade, and entrepreneurial energy - and trace how Lloyd’s simple idea of gathering people around conversation became the foundation of a global insurance market.

They discuss:

• How coffee houses became the “WeWorks” of their day - buzzing centres of trade, gossip, and deal-making.
• How the Lloyd's Coffee House we know today, celebrated by the blue plaque on Lombard Street, wasn't it's original home - and why Lloyd moved it.
• The way he gathered news, data, and sea captains to create one of the first real-time information hubs in history.
• How his brand endured long after his death, and why the name Lloyd still defines credibility three centuries later.

Howard also shares the mission behind the Insurance Museum, a project dedicated to preserving the human stories of an industry that quietly underwrites our world.

This is a conversation about legacy, curiosity, and the entrepreneurial spark that built an institution from nothing more than coffee, community, and courage.

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.

If these stories resonate with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a colleague or friend who still believes in the people side of this business.

You can also connect with Daniel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, recommend guests, or request a topic that you'd like to know more about.

Humanizing Insurance — one conversation at a time.

In this episode of Humanizing Insurance, host Daniel Grimwood Bird engages in a compelling conversation with Curtis Goldsborough, a dynamic figure in the insurance industry known for blending humor with insightful industry commentary on platforms like LinkedIn.

Curtis shares his unconventional path into insurance, starting from his early aspirations in computer science, through ministry, media, and finally into insurance.

Highlighting his meteoric rise from an entry-level role to becoming the president of an underwriting inspection company, Curtis emphasizes the importance of soft skills, practical experience, and empathy in leadership.

He passionately discusses the industry's shift towards predictive prevention over reactive measures, the need for consumer education, and his creative outlet, 'LO$$ RATIO', which merges humor and critical issues.

Curtis' journey underscores the necessity of evolving industry practices to benefit society as a whole, while also offering a glimpse into his personal life and parental aspirations

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.

If these stories resonate with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a colleague or friend who still believes in the people side of this business.

You can also connect with Daniel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, recommend guests, or request a topic that you'd like to know more about.

Humanizing Insurance — one conversation at a time.

In this episode of Humanizing Insurance, host Daniel Grimwood-Bird welcomes Tee Barr, Director of Product - Geospatial at Verisk Extreme Event Solutions and a part-time lecturer at Northeastern University.

Tee shares a comprehensive overview of their 25-year career in geospatial information and how their passion for geography led them to unexpected roles, including significant stints in defence and intelligence, precision agriculture, and finally, the insurance industry. The conversation delves into the intrinsic role of geospatial technology in various fields, the future of geospatial in insurance, and the industry’s slow adoption of new technologies.

Tee also reflects on their personal journey towards authenticity, coming out as non-binary and queer, and how shedding their 'mask' transformed their personal and professional life.

The episode concludes with Tee discussing leadership, mentorship, and the importance of a supportive network.

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.

If these stories resonate with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a colleague or friend who still believes in the people side of this business.

You can also connect with Daniel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, recommend guests, or request a topic that you'd like to know more about.

Humanizing Insurance — one conversation at a time.

In this episode of Humanizing Insurance, host Daniel Grimwood-Bird engages in a profound conversation with Mark Huxley, a seasoned expert in the insurance sector with nearly 50 years of experience.

Mark delves into his beginnings in London's East End, his unexpected entry into the world of insurance, and the pivotal moments that shaped his career. He shares insights on the evolution of the insurance industry, the entrepreneurial journey of establishing the first outsourced claims TPA, and his dedicated work in promoting social mobility and inclusivity. Mark reflects on influential mentors, the significance of the Lloyd's Lab, and his extensive engagement in the City of London's livery companies. This episode offers a unique perspective on combining professional success with social responsibility, making meaningful contributions, and fostering innovation in the insurance industry.

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.

If these stories resonate with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a colleague or friend who still believes in the people side of this business.

You can also connect with Daniel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, recommend guests, or request a topic that you'd like to know more about.

Humanizing Insurance — one conversation at a time.