January 2020
Make no mistake, the sudden news that performance management director Jon Hancock is leaving Lloyd’s will send ripples across the London market.
He’s the man who stopped the rot and set the wheels in motion for a more profitable Lloyd’s. At a time when the future for 1 Lime Street looked bleak, he demonstrated that a firm hand and a risk-based approach to regulation could start to rectify the mistakes of the past, albeit slowly.
Lloyd’s had suffered from a crisis of confidence – even John Neal acknowledged when he arrived as CEO that the marketplace had lost its mojo. Restoring positivity in the market has been a big win for the Corporation in recent times, and Hancock’s role across performance and transformation was an important driver of that renewed confidence.
It goes without saying that his exit is a major blow for Lloyd’s, at a time when momentum around performance and strategy was just starting to gain pace.
Lloyd’s is keen to publicly show that there are no hard feelings. The transition will be flexible to suit both parties, they have said. There will be no cliff edge.
Both Neal and Hancock have stressed that this separation is nothing to do with differences of professional opinion – nevertheless market tongues will still wag on whether this departure is really to do with the fact that Hancock’s more measured view of how to implement change was at odds with Neal’s ambition to spark a big bang moment for Lloyd’s.
Departing before he has done four years in the role – and in a critical year for the Lloyd’s transformation work – certainly suggests there is more behind the move than just itchy feet.
When we spoke to him, Hancock stressed a desire to return to the commercial side of insurance, to be challenged in a way that only P&L business accountability can do.
This only works to emphasise a wider challenge that Lloyd’s faces in retaining and keeping the best talent. The best staff are reluctant to work at regulators long term.
Talent retention and turnover of staff has historically been a big issue within the Corporation, even if recently improved sentiment around Lloyd’s puts it in a much better position to recruit a highly credible successor.
The next question for the Corporation is who wants to take on arguably one of the toughest jobs in the global (re)insurance market.
Few individuals impact the performance of such a wide swathe of the market. The performance management director has a remarkable level of influence on both market profitability and pricing dynamics.
For the Corporation, performance is a key pillar of the strategy and it cannot afford to falter now that gains are starting to be made – and particularly with another calendar-year underwriting loss most likely in the pipeline.
Neal has stressed that the tone of performance management will continue with the new recruit, and the standards that Hancock has set will “100 percent” continue.
For the good of the market, this statement must prove to be more than just lip service.
But at the same time, there will not be complete continuity between the new regime and the old. The new performance management director will surely want to make his or her own mark in the role and will not want to live in Hancock’s shadow.
It will be a fine line to tread, while carrying a huge weight of responsibility.
As we have said before, the talent element is crucial to Lloyd’s ability to carry out the transformational change it is targeting.
With much more still to be done, the next performance management director will be one of the most important hires, if not the most important, Lloyd’s has made in recent times.
