Review: Changing insurance and having fun

What makes a highly successful business leader tick? 

What gets them out of bed in the morning to build a world-class company, rescue an iconic institution or, in their sixth decade in business, decide to launch a start-up? 

That’s the question that Faith & Purpose – The Life and Vision of Insurance Icon Brian Duperreault endeavours to answer. 

The answer, in part, is contained in the title of Wendy Davis Johnson’s deeply researched 377-page book, which was launched earlier this month. 

The book shows that Duperreault has always had a vision of what makes a great company, but in that, he is not alone – most successful business leaders have a guiding light for their business. 

More unusually in this era, Duperreault is also guided by his Christian (and more specifically Roman Catholic) faith, sometimes directly in a way that will surprise some readers, and more often in the way he lived his life according to its principles.

And he knows himself. A big thinker, he was adept at recruiting brilliant subordinates who could dig into the detail and secure enough to let them do their jobs and grow in the process. 

As Davis Johnson writes at the beginning of the book: “Brian is embraced as a global icon – someone who has managed to accomplish wildly bold strategies, who relishes the cut and thrust of a deal as much as any tycoon, who lights up when he explains how insurance is like gambling, who stand alone running both a broker and carrier and leading three companies to Fortune 500 status.

“He’s a figure who is still admired and respected as a decent , compassionate and caring individual, who puts together high performing teams to get the job done – without burning bridges. In the upper echelons of any industry, this is a rarity; it is particularly unusual in the insurance industry.” 

Duperreault has perhaps the most impressive CV of any of his contemporaries. 

He joined American International Group in the early 1970s as a trainee actuary and rapidly rose to be one of legendary chief executive officer Maurice (Hank) Greenberg’s most trusted deputies. He then left AIG to head up Bermuda-based ACE Ltd, then a dual line re/insurer founded to fill the gap in excess liability coverage, and turned it into a global powerhouse, largely through a series of bold mergers and acquisitions.   

After leaving ACE, he was asked to take over Marsh & McLennan, then flailing as a result of a price-fixing investigation into its broking business, stabilised it and turned it around when many observers were writing it off. 

After leaving Marsh, he then launched Hamilton Insurance Group, with the bold ambition of using big data to revolutionise underwriting. The only job he said would leave Hamilton for was to run AIG, and when the company, which had struggled since the 2008 financial crisis, came calling, he duly went. Again, he stabilised the company and turned it around before leaving. 

Now 77, he is executive chairman of Mereo Insurance, Bermuda’s latest major start-up. 

That journey is meticulously told by Davis Johnson and gives you a powerful insight not only into the stories of some of the most important businesses in the insurance industry and how in the cases of AIG and Marsh, they came close to collapse. 

They also explain in detail what Duperreault did, and how he did it.   

But a straight retelling of what and how he did it, and his approach to leadership and management, does not explain why he did it. 

For that, you have to go back to his faith and his upbringing. 

When Duperreault’s mother was four months pregnant with him, her husband and his father left, having been revealed as a bigamist with another wife and two children.  

Duperreault’s mother then went to join friends then stationed by happy coincidence in Bermuda, where she gave birth to her son. 

Mother and son then returned to Philadelphia where she raised him singlehandedly in often straitened circumstances. He attended Catholic schools and St Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania where his natural leadership ability shone through. 

Although he would drift away from the church in his 20s and 30s, he regained his faith in his early 40s when he felt called by God to go into a church in Manhattan where he made confession. From then on, it is clear that his faith was a key part of his life, although the precepts of Christian faith appeared to have stayed with him throughout. 

Later, he says God literally spoke to him to be CEO of Marsh & McLennan, an admission that would seem shocking coming from others, but has been accepted in the case of Duperreault. A track record of success and honesty speaks volumes. 

Apart from his faith, which accounts for the multiple accounts of his kindness and compassion as a leader and philanthropist,  it could be argued that Duperreault’s ambition was driven by his tough upbringing. 

But there is something more going on here as well. What the book makes clear is that Duperreault loves insurance and risk. 

There are innumerable times when Duperreault or his colleagues say how much fun they had building their businesses. 

Davis Johnson recounts a telling conversation Duperreault’s wife Nancy had with him after he left AIG and ACE was taking off.

Davis Johnson quotes Duperreault recalling: “After we moved to Bermuda, Nancy says to me, ‘You know it was never Hank (Greenberg, AIG CEO), who created all the craziness for you.  It was you the whole time. You created these issues. You’re the one out there doing all this stuff.’ She was good natured and she understood why I was doing what  I was doing, but she was right.

“I was on fire. I loved the fight, I was having so much fun, and I was discovering myself as well.”     

This seems to explain what drives Duperreault. It’s not the money, although he has more than enough and when he left AIG, he walked away from a wealthy future for an uncertain present at ACE. Nor is it the status – throughout the book, Duperreault leaves jobs while he is still on top whereas most insurance CEOs hang on to their jobs for dear life. 

Instead, it’s  the passion Duperreault has for the industry and the job and the sheer joy he takes in making changes for the better that seems to drive him. 

Indeed, this was embodied in one of the first principles established for Hamilton. The principle was “be more” an idea derived from the Jesuit belief in “magis”, The explanation for the principle was: 

“Strive harder. Reach further. Never give up. 

You’ll be better and so will the industry and our communities. 

Smile often and frequently, because changing an industry is tremendous fun.”

Brian Duperreault has been changing insurance and having fun for 50 years. Long may he continue to do so.  

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