Everyone is talking about: Ed

Possibly the biggest single talking point of the reinsurance world so far in 2016 has been the surprise and somewhat bizarre rebranding of broker Cooper Gay as Ed.

The new name was unveiled to staff in London ahead of the Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous and then to the wider world on the eve of and during that essential event for the industry.

The new name certainly raised a few eyebrows, although it did also get people talking about the broker. Steve Hearn, chief executive of Ed, was keen to stress that the new name and brand was the culmination of a much more fundamental restructuring of the company that started almost a year ago when he took the reins of the company in November 2015. He had resigned from Willis, where he had been deputy CEO, four months earlier.

ROOT AND BRANCH REFORM

At that point, the company, backed by private equity fund Lightyear Capital since it acquired a controlling interest in 2013, was saddled with $400 million of public debt and had a complex network of operations with little cohesion.

Hearn says his first aim was to clear the debt. The company achieved this by selling Swett & Crawford for $500 million to BB&T. The company also received a $35 million capital injection from its private equity backer.

Hearn then set about reorganising and refocusing the company. He decided to exit retail business completely and sold off various smaller operations either unconnected to the core parts of the business or which was unprofitable. “We sold or divested a lot of different smaller operations,” he says.

This left the company focused on wholesale insurance and reinsurance business. He said the company now has a solid presence in all the major markets globally for risk transfer, with the exception of Bermuda, which he describes as an “odd gap” in the company’s portfolio.

He plans to fix this by the end of the year, revealing plans for a new operation in Bermuda which will employ around five people.

“It was an odd missing piece of the puzzle for us and we will solve that by the end of the year,” Hearn says. “I feel Bermuda is more vibrant and relevant than it has ever been, in part thanks to Solvency II equivalence. We look forward to establishing a presence in that market.”

The company’s operational structure is now completely global, he says, with three divisional bosses covering treaty, marine and specialty, which includes aviation, managing general agents and a number of other classes, with each responsible for a global P&L. This means the broker can service its clients on a completely global basis.

“It is something smaller brokers cannot offer and bigger brokers do not do in reality because they have regional units competing with each other,” he says. “We will not make that mistake. Everything about Ed will put customer service and delivery first.”

He believes that Ed now has the right structure, people, position in the market and brand to offer a genuine alternative to clients. “I find that people want change. We are often pushing on an open door,” he says. “We offer something different. We are big enough to be relevant and small enough to deliver.”

He is also targeting growth on the reinsurance side of the business. This represents 10 percent of the company’s total earnings at the moment but he believes it has a lot of potential for growth. He has also not ruled out entering the insurance-linked securities and alternative capital markets at some point, but he admits the company is not there yet with this ambition.

LOVE IT OR HATE IT

Hearn accepts that not everyone will understand or embrace the rebrand immediately—some of the company’s own board members took some convincing. But he remains comfortable with the new identity and the logic behind it.

“I always knew there would be three types of people in the way they reacted to the rebrand. There would be those who would view it as exciting, disruptive and dynamic; those who would think I had lost my mind; and those who wouldn’t care,” he says.

When he gathered the company’s 400-strong staff base together in a hotel in London to unveil the new brand, this last group was his main target. “I wanted people to understand that it represents much more than a new name or a new brand, it is a brand new start for this company,” he says.

Some of the company’s board members needed convincing, but former AIG boss Martin Sullivan, the company’s chairman, was very much in the first camp and understood it and embraced it immediately.

Hearn says when the name Ed was first conceived he sent the presentation to Sullivan, waited 15 minutes and then called him. “I was nervous but he absolutely understood it and loved it,” he recalls.

In terms of the origins of the name, he explains that they initially played with many ideas. He noted that many companies are named after their now-deceased founders or street names with relevance to a company. He wanted something rooted in the past but also fresh and dynamic.

“So 325 years ago, Edward Lloyd’s coffee shop became the place to buy marine insurance. That is the tradition but we then wanted to consider what a modern coffee shop is today. It is modern, cosmopolitan, advanced and fast-moving—everything Ed stands for,” he says.