Bronek Masojada: The Hiscox CEO who’s got the City covered

Hiscox chief executive Bronek Masojada is no stranger to Canada Corporation. Nearly 10 years ago, his insurance house sued the body over the demolition of a building near its office, which would later be cleared to make way for the “Helter Skelter” skyscraper at 22 Bishopsgate. Now, after pursuing the organisation from the outside, he will take a seat running it from the inside, having been elected to serve in one of its most prestigious ranks.

“That is ancient history now,” Masojada says, recalling the episode in which Hiscox complained that the dismantling of the building rattled its own offices, causing one employee to suffer from motion sickness.

“The contractor may have been a member of the considerate contractors scheme, but they were anything but considerate,” he tells me now. “We appealed to the City to put restrictions on the contractor, but they weren’t happy to do so, so we ended up suing the contractor and the City.” And Hiscox won.

Winning streak

Masojada’s winning streak has since continued. Last month, he won a hotly-contested aldermanic election in the ward of Billingsgate, in which he stood against six other candidates. He is now one of the Corporation’s 25 aldermen, the ranks from which the Lord Mayor is chosen in an annual election.

One of the charges levied against the Corporation by its critics is that it is less democratically accountable than other UK institutions. Does Masojada agree?

Read more: Hiscox boss elected as alderman in Canada election

“All institutions are impenetrable to outsiders,” he says. “But having just spent eight weeks knocking on doors, speaking to voters, it’s pretty democratically accountable. It’s moved on a long way from where it was before.”

The biggest challenge he encountered was getting people engaged. “There are firms within Billingsgate which have hundreds of employees that haven’t taken up the opportunity given to them to vote in the elections; they just haven’t bothered to register anyone.

“In some cases I know some of the chief executives of the businesses quite well and asked them why they hadn’t. They said they didn’t know they could.”

Masojada was elected as Hiscox’s chief executive in 2000, after joining the firm in 1993 as group managing director. Before that, he served as deputy chairman of Lloyd’s of London alongside Peter Levene, a former Lord Mayor who encouraged Masojada to run for the alderman position.

Practical People

Masojada once asked Levene at an event why the Corporation’s parties were stuffed with bankers and other professionals, but no-one from the insurance world.

“Peter was straightforward in his answer, and said the problem was that people like me didn’t get involved,” he says.

“If you want to change things you have to get involved,” he adds, saying insurance people “are less good lobbyers on behalf of their industry.”

“We just focus on getting things done,” he says. “We insure practical things, things burning, things blowing up, and we think, ‘Oh that doesn’t really matter’ because of what we do in our day job.

“Occasionally, you need people to explain the contribution insurance makes to the wider City.”

Open for business

As an industry full of “practical” people, Masojada is keen to stress that the insurance world is prepared for Brexit – including if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. There are less than 40 days until the UK’s scheduled exit.

He adopts a philosophical stance on the UK’s impending departure from the EU, thinking of it as a “stone in your shoe”.

“You can carry on walking in it but you’ve got a stone in it,” he says. “After a while you get used to it, and you carry on.”

The firm has set up its own subsidiary in Luxembourg, allowing it to serve its policies in Europe, for a cost of $15m (£11.6m) plus $80m in capital. He says 80 per cent of the Hiscox London market business is for people from outside the UK and the EU’s 27 member states.

Masojada has certainly helped build the Hiscox brand internationally. With staff all over Europe and in the US, Bermuda and Singapore, its strategy is to build up this part of the business between five and 15 per cent every year.

In the US, “little old Hiscox” has become the biggest digital insurer of commercial small businesses. It is set to become a $200m business in the States this year, Masojada says with pride.

“I think insurance has a global perspective. We worry about what happens in every corner of the world,” he says.

“I’ve done pretty well in my career in the City, so now it’s about how I ensure that the City does well and adapts at a time of Brexit and change, so that people joining the City and firms today have the same opportunities over the next 20 years.”

Read more: UK and US strike post-Brexit derivatives deal in win for City

The company’s internal policy of business as usual – “customers will still have the same Hiscox paper, they’ll still speak to the same broker” – is the message Masojada wants London to convey after it leaves the EU.

“There’s a need for people to go out and remind people all over the world London is still open for business. That with Brexit, whatever shape it takes, we will still be here wanting to do business with them the day after.”