Beazley’s new APAC Head looks to strong growth in cyber, property, and marine

Jessica Schappell, Beazley’s newly-appointed Head of Asia Pacific, plans to focus on strengthening the core areas of cyber, property and marine – three specialty lines of business that the insurer is already well-known for in the region.

“We’re focused on building a profitable business with strong growth,” says Schappell. “Our specialties are those niche areas where we know we can bring extra value.”

Beazley announced the promotion of Schappell on July 29. Prior to this role, Schappell was Claims Manager for Specialty Risk and Cyber in APAC. She has been with Beazley for nearly 18 years.

Schappell says that, since assuming her role, she has been travelling around the region, meeting with brokers and insureds “to discuss the value we bring as a specialty with local expertise”.

The APAC head says that there is “a lot of healthy competition across Asia”, but adds that markets are still very fragmented across the region, with varying levels of economic maturity and cultural differences.

“This increases the value of working with a specialist insurer. We are working to build awareness around Beazley and explain what we bring to the table,” says Schappell.

“Our specialties are those niche areas where we know we can bring extra value.”

Jessica Schappell

Beazley’s Head of APAC

Cyber as core lynchpin

Earlier this year, Beazley launched something that the specialty insurer terms Full Spectrum Cyber, which combines underwriting and claims capabilities with pre-emptive risk management. These services have recently been rolled out to Asia.

“Clients can take advantage of the cohesive underwriting, claims and incident response team ready to help them respond to an incident, develop proactive plans in the event of an attack and even test those plans to increase preparedness should they face an incident,” says Schappell.

Additionally, in June, Beazley Security (the group’s cyber risk company, started providing clients in Singapore with a new Managed eXtended Detection & Response (MXDR) service to offer always-on monitoring and advanced capabilities. This can help clients rapidly identify and contain cyber threats.

“In Asia, where cyber maturity is in a much earlier stage of development than the U.S. for example, this can bring immediate value to clients who haven’t had to navigate U.S. privacy laws or GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] in Europe,” she says.

For more mature APAC markets, such as Australia, Schappell says that the Full Spectrum Cyber proposition helps foster a spirit of collaboration, allowing clients to build “an ecosystem of cybersecurity” in order to prepare for rising threat levels.

According to the Financial Services Information Sharing and Financial Services Centre, a global cyber intelligence community, cyberattacks increased 15% year-on-year in APAC during 2023. The Ponemon Institute, a US-headquartered research institute, says that the number of data breaches in the region has increased by 20% over the past two years.

“People are seeing more value in having cyber insurance and we are having more discussions. Incidents such as CrowdStrike have really helped raise awareness of this segment of the insurance market,” says Schappell.

As a result, Beazley says that it is seeing a lot more traction in the cyber risk space in the region, especially among large multinational companies that work internationally.

“There’s still a lot of room to grow here across APAC,” she says.

As a business as a whole, cyber risks is one of Beazley’s largest books of business, accounting for 21% of total gross written premiums (GWPs), according to the firm’s latest annual reports. This is just behind property risks, which accounts for 24% of total GWPs. It is unclear, however, what proportion of this cyber business comes from APAC.

Other lines

Beazley is also looking to grow its property portfolio in Asia, and three key hires earlier this year in order to do so. This includes Chun Kiat Goh, a property underwriter who jumped across from AXA XL in March. He hired an assistant underwriter, and the appointment of another underwriter is soon to be finalised.

“With deeper bench strength in Singapore dedicated to open market property, we’ll be able to scale the business throughout the region, take advantage of more opportunities and respond quickly when a risk is presented,” says Schappell. “With good risk selection and a forward looking view of risk through underwriting expertise, we are able to be a long-term, stable reinsurance partner in the face of risks and help clients build resiliency.”

According to GlobalData, APAC’s property insurance market is poised for significant growth over the next few years, reaching $152.2 billion in terms of gross written premium across the region, up from $93.1 billion GWP in 2023. This would represent a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.8%, ahead of the global annual growth rate of 8.1% CAGR.

Marine is another priority area for Beazley in the region.

“In Singapore we write the traditional marine lines of business – cargo, hull, war for example, and we continue to target organic growth in these lines of business,” says Schappell.

Last year the insurer added a dedicated marine claims manager, Siew Ping Lim, to the team.

This is “to help deliver our proposition as we continue to broaden our regional product capabilities and explore new geographies,” says Schappell.

In its annual report, Beazley says that its marine cargo book is three times larger than it was five years ago, largely due to supply chain disruption and a reshaping of shipping routes. Given Singapore’s importance as a shipping hub, APAC is likely to be an important driver of future marine opportunities.

Long-term partnership

While renewal negotiations are set to be smoother than they were a couple of years ago, there still could still be some challenging areas, especially in light of recent hurricanes that have swept across the eastern US and could put pressure on nat cat books.

In APAC, Beazley will be emphasising its role as a long-term strategic partner during renewal discussions.

“When we look at a risk, we try to take the long-term view. It’s heartening when we get in front of a client or prospective client and they want to build a long-term partnership, says Schappell. “We will be emphasising the value proposition that we continue to bring to clients and demonstrating how we have delivered on our past promises.”

Over the past 12 months, the specialty insurer has identified three core risks that are centred around climate change, technology transformation (including AI) and geopolitical uncertainty.

“That’s where regional expertise has a big role to play. It’s important to have the right people in place to take advantage of when market conditions begin to change,” says Schappell.