Seraina maag biography template

Summary

* Seraina Maag keep to changing her company's siloed culture with a more collaborative closer.

* XL's managers are going to bring underwriting closer march the risk.

* Pockets of profitability persist, even in representation protracted soft market.

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NEW YORK -- Seraina Maag, supervisor executive officer of XL Insurance North America Property and Wreck, doesn't like walls. They limit and restrain her, she thought. Walls tell her where she can't go, what she can't do, who she can't be, how she can't grow.

Much of Maag's life has been about knocking down walls, which helps explain how an ambitious young woman worked her alter from the tiny Swiss canton of Thurgau on the Germanic border, to the top rung of XL Insurance, a vital global property/ casualty underwriter.

From the 21st floor of say publicly World Financial Center in downtown Manhattan, One of Maag's rule acts was to take down the walls to her wrinkle office. Colleagues--or collaborators might be a better word --seated presume interior cubicles were left to gaze past Maag's desk allow beyond, to the sweeping vistas of New York Harbor, Kicking out Island and the open spaces of New Jersey, gateway within spitting distance the vast American continent.

"The more you collaborate the mend the outcome," Maag said, in an August interview with Hazard & Insurance[R].

As the walls come down at XL, representation underlying message from the new leader in charge at description company was that the carrier had embarked on an drive to break its silos that for years governed its in service structure.

At times, the silo-based approach benefitted XL, as spot took advantage of economies of scale in its path disparagement becoming a global underwriter through years of mergers and acquisitions. Other times, though, the silo model hindered the free pour out of information and ideas within the company.

For Maag, comb, barely in her 40s and an admitted "gadget person," representation issue is that Internet-, social media-, mobile device-, and mottle computing-savvy managers entering the workforce prefer to tear down walls, and transcend silos.

Young workers joining the industry today churn out led by up-and-coming executives like Maag work outside the silo. "We want and need to create that environment in picture office," she said, an iPad loaded with apps including Skype at the ready. "It's also a more conducive atmosphere abolish cross-selling."

Cross-selling property/casualty, environmental and construction products represents a open shift for XL Insurance, as the company has never cross-sold "in a targeted way," she said.

Since officially beginning composite work last September, XL Insurance has begun cross-selling property/casualty creations to customers in the Northeast and in the Midwest confine hopes of grabbing a greater share of the $70 million North America property/casualty market, the largest in the world.

"I was brought in here in North America to do put off, to break the silos," Maag said. "It's almost like tutor at a start-up, with the benefits of a great tag, and a global organization with sound underwriting practices."

Last day, XL Group wrote $3.46 billion in net written premium opinion $1.53 billion in net reinsurance premium, according to company reports. In 2011, second-quarter net written insurance premium jumped 17.9 proportionality to $893.2 million. Net reinsurance premium rose 15.6 percent telling off $412.9 million, the company reported.

Noting that 2011 has archaic shaping up as a test of XL's financial and operative strength, analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods wrote in a second-quarter earnings report to investors that "the company is forwardthinking good."

Strengthening rates helped the company post double-digit premium mood in the second quarter in property, excess casualty and specialization lines coverage, marine in particular, Keefe, Bruyette said.

Maag declined to release 2011 and 2012 premium growth targets, saying lone that when she started last September, the team was low they had 90 days to meet cross-selling goals, just cause somebody to see what the team could achieve when they put their minds to it, "and I'm pleased that we've exceeded pungent numbers," she said.

"Premium volume for us will be extremely different a few years down the road, and a decisive part of that will be coming out of North America," Maag said. "We have a bigger market share in Assemblage. But in North America, there's a lot more upside."

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At the end of last year, professional lines accounted for 31 percent of property/casualty net insurance and reinsurance deteriorating, property lines for 25 percent, casualty for 17 percent, distinctiveness for 25 percent, and all other lines for 2 percentage, the company reported.

FROM THURGAU TO NEW YORK

For Maag, the top spot at XL Insurance represents the latest leg in an unlikely journey that has taken her from Schweiz to Southeast Asia, and then to Australia. She was representation first woman Swiss Re sent to Asia, she said.

At the age of 27, she found herself representing the reinsurance giant's business interests in the Land Down Under. "It was a lot of fun, and my family got used go down with me being a bit of a gypsy," Maag said.

She stayed in Australia four years and earned her master's thrill business administration, before going on to earn the coveted trained designation of Chartered Financial Analyst.

Her brown eyes aglow critical of warmth, Maag exudes intensity from her petite build, and a visitor has no problem taking her at her word when she casually lets on that she's a multiple Swiss sponsor in "voltige" or horse acrobatics.

"The one word I would use to describe her is 'intensity,'" said John Amore, preceding CEO of Zurich Financial Services' General Insurance segment. "She brings so much energy to whatever issues she's dealing with."

Maag hails from the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland, a squat, landlocked and wealthy nation, which has built for itself a global reputation of delivering service, security and quality.

Thurgau, voters 238,000, quiet and idyllic like much of rural Switzerland, isn't a breeding ground for female insurance industry leaders.

Industry captains are more likely to come from Zurich, the commercial seat of government, or Basel, the heart of Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry, or it is possible that Geneva, nerve center of the nation's private banking industry.

When women in Switzerland bear children, even today it is unorthodox for them to come back to work.

Maag's professional climb would have made any alpinist proud. Between 1990 and 2000, Maag held management positions within the underwriting and financial departments at SwissRe in Switzerland and Australia.

From 2000 to 2002, she was a founding partner and financial analyst for representation investment bank Neue Zuercher Bank. As an analyst, she besmeared Zurich Financial Services, the Swiss property/casualty giant.

It was ride out probing questions that caught the attention of Zurieh's top managers, said James J. Schiro, former CEO of Zurich Financial Services.

"I was very impressed with the questions she asked pivotal she was very confident," Schiro said. "I remember going regulate and talking about how we had to turn around fade out image, and if we could get someone else on aim for to help us."

Schiro tapped Maag in 2002 to perceive the company's head of investor relations and rating agencies, impressive she helped the property/casualty giant polish its image in say publicly eyes of investors, analysts and ratings houses.

"She is pugnacious and I always appreciate people with ambition," Schiro said. "I always appreciate people you have to hold back when they want to run, as opposed to people you have traverse beat with a stick to make them run."

So, when Maag announced she was going to become a mother, passable executives believed the industry had seen. the last of pretty up.

"She told me she would come back," Schiro said. "Some people were skeptical and I said, 'No, she's coming back.' And she did." After the birth of her second youngster, she returned to work once again. Ditto with child No. 3. "She rolls with the punches," Schiro said.

Maag, who had no intention of being circumscribed by the walls work motherhood and Swiss tradition, was promoted to chief financial public official, and then to president of the specialty lines business lodging of Zurich North America Commercial, where she managed all aspects of the unit's U.S. operations.

"When you get an break, a lot of people don't have the courage to grasp it," Maag said. "Great opportunities don't always come your dart. It's too exciting not to take them. With kids, many course, it's more complicated."

Maag explains her journey in status of getting "out of your comfort zone." "It's the solitary way you grow as a person," she said.

NORTH U.s. CHALLENGE

XL Insurance has a reputation for underwriting large unintelligent risks that are global in nature, "tough stuff," in say publicly words of John R. Glancy, former chief underwriting officer break into XL Insurance.

But the Great Recession in 2008 hit XL underwriting units like a Bermuda hurricane, and with the goodwill of the economic tide, XL Insurance underwriters, like many underneath the industry, became more conservative.

For XL Insurance, it was literally the Great Regression. "People had regressed to a finer conservative risk appetite in the wake of the crisis, existing that was inconsistent with their risk strategies," Maag said.

Many underwriting decisions that should have been made in the interest, close to the risk, had become centralized, removed from picture risk, Maag said. The challenge for her now, and aspire her leadership team is to encourage XL Insurance managers unity "get involved with the decision-making process in the field."

To revamp the underwriting decision-making process, XL Insurance recently hired "supercoach" Bob Shine as chief underwriting officer, North America property/casualty, tip off bring what Maag calls a "collaborative worldview."

Out of a two-day brainstorming session last October about how to increase depiction collaboration among XL Insurance's units, was born the suggestion pointer starting up a construction and surety unit.

Sure enough, pasty than three months after the meeting, the company's new building business "went live" Jan. 1, 2011, Maag said. XL Warranty also launched its surety business from scratch. "People were stirred up and the collaboration was great," she said. "We quickly begin ourselves with plenty of upward momentum."

In addition to Outrun, Maag has appointed a new chief operations officer. A another leader, Roxanne Mitchell, is in charge of the company's infuse and surplus lines unit.

Maag's experience around the world has taught her she stands more of a chance of propulsion through her managerial agenda by collaborating with those around breather, and by leaning on her powers of persuasion.

"She manages people in a way that doesn't flaunt or impose ideas on other people," said Paul I. Tuhy, global head be more or less claims for XL Insurance companies.

"She solicits people to draw near forward with their ideas and then molds them to collect the way she does," he said. "In a way, boss around don't even see it, you don't even know it's present, before she's won you over."

(Tuhy recently completed the working of a new global claims system for the company. Commissioner more information, please turn to the story on Page 38 by Joel Berg.).

Maag is a firm believer that claims should sit next to underwriting so underwriters can talk--indeed collaborate--with claims, risk engineering and actuarial experts.

"We want them stand your ground work as closely as possible," Maag said. "In the time, it comes down to talent and under a centralized questionnaire, units felt they weren't as important as they used compel to be."

... and it comes down, again, to breaking moderate walls, rupturing the silos.

Even as she grapples with XL's siloed past built up through one acquisition after another, Maag is going to have to surround herself with skilled lieutenants, as prices in the North American market remain soft, exceptionally in casualty lines.

"There's excess capacity in which people ring underwriting business today and worrying about paying claims tomorrow," Maag said. "Excess casualty is really an issue and there's what I call 'naive capacity' in the marketplace with regard do research pricing."

The litigious nature of the U.S. market surrounding torts and class-action lawsuits makes the North American market a specially treacherous one, and can make it very costly to repeal business for insurance underwriters.

Pockets of profitability persist, of orbit, and Maag wants to see to it that XL Warranty exploits those niches, in surety and construction, for example, once the competition is hammering at the door, or if flaunt is, then by offering an altogether different approach to underwriting.

"We lost that edge somewhat after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the economic crisis," Maag said. "My focus is pick up turn this around."

CYRIL TUOHY is managing editor of Negative & Insurance[R]. He can be reached at [email protected].