Alex & Al - Coast to Coast: Alliant Welcomes Alex Littlejohn

Intro (00:01):
This is Alex & Al: Coast to Coast, a show dedicated to exploring insurance news, topics and trends shaping the market today. Here are your hosts, Alex Littlejohn and Al Tobin.

Al Tobin (00:15):
Welcome everybody, very excited today to introduce one of our newest employees, in the continuance of Alliant to bring in the best talent in the insurance marketplace. So, with that, I'd like to introduce Alex Littlejohn, a woman that probably doesn't need much introduction because she's very well known. She's worked in multiple cities in the US and abroad. Welcome, Alex.

Alex Littlejohn (00:39):
Thanks, Al, very excited to be here. I am on, I think it's probably day eight or nine, so the first issue of our coast-to-coast podcast is very exciting. You've given a great introduction, so I appreciate that, just a little bit about myself: I'm a native San Franciscan, and many people don't know that about me. I was born and raised in San Francisco and left many, many, many moons ago and went overseas, and then landed in New York and have just recently been back here for the last four years. So, what a great change and a refreshing move it's been so far joining Alliant and the team of professionals over here. I am focusing on bringing great creative solutions to clients, helping wherever I can in a complex deal at the market, making sure that our markets are recognizing the strength and the breadth of the organization holistically. So, that will take us across the country or in a particular geography or an industry. With my background, it's been mostly in the brokerage arena. Many of you that do know me know that I've spent a lot of time in the global marketplace and I'm also cross-functional; I have a property background and an excess casualty background, mainly on the large account space, dealing with the fortune 500 companies, and just been a breadth of experience across all kinds of platforms from the big brokers to small unique niche markets overseas. So, I'm excited to be here.

Al Tobin (02:04):
Welcome, once again. One of the interesting things about the situation of COVID is that these podcasts are really great for our audience. We're very excited at Alliant to be doing the Alex & Al: Coast to Coast, to give you an idea of how the market looks for our customers and also our colleagues. We're going to talk about transitioning business during COVID. We are going to talk about COVID claims and COVID’s impact on different product areas. Quite frankly, many of our customers are enduring right now because of 2020. Some of our biggest customers are in the retail space and the hospitality space and there’s a lot to discuss there. I, once, interviewed Hank Greenberg, years back, for 90 minutes and one of my esteemed friends, out of the London market that made me, David Frost. So, this is probably not going to be similar to a David Frost situation, but we're really looking forward to the content that we can enjoy here.

Alex Littlejohn (03:03):
We see things probably similarly in most areas, and then there are things that I might be seeing on the west and you're not seeing on the east and vice versa. I think having this platform to be able to talk openly about the things that are going on in the marketplace will be fun to do.

Al Tobin (03:22):
One of the things that I've truly missed over the past year was interaction with markets and colleagues and customers, in particular, that interaction abroad in London and Bermuda particularly, and Alex, I just thought maybe you could comment on some of your experience over the years, working with those two markets specifically.

Alex Littlejohn (03:45):
Honestly, it's been a huge mess over the last 12 months. In fact, I was just thinking the other day that the last time I was in London was about just a year ago, maybe just shy of a year. I think that we've got to get back, that we've got to evolve back in our market. I think it's ever-changing. It's been dynamic. It's been difficult to be able to relay clients' messages, while platforms like our virtual set-up and the environments have been good, and thank goodness we've had them, there's nothing like that discussion around face-to-face tackling issues with our underwriters. It just makes so much more progress, especially in Bermuda. When you think about the Bermuda market, as you well know, Al, there are really no conversations that can occur unless you're in Bermuda. The conversations that we've had to have with clients on the phone to our Bermuda underwriting counterparts have been very bland. There's no devil in the detail unless you're sitting in Bermuda, you can have those conversations. So, we need to get back there. I'm hoping that over the next three, four, or five months, or so it will open up and we can do it. It's an incredibly important market to us; It's important in property, it is important in excess casualty. Certainly, it provides an alternative. We cannot disregard it. I believe very strongly that we need to get back to kind of a regular course of broken in overseas.

Al Tobin (05:20):
Yeah, I agree. I think that's a significantly limiting factor in the Bermuda market specifically from the standpoint of the legal restrictions there unless it's coming in from London. They’re one of the kind, having this conversation, at the same time as Alliant and specialty, being such a big player in the construction world gets to celebrate women in construction. So, kudos to all of our colleagues that are being recognized around the country, and in regards to that, it’d be remiss of me, not to point that out on today's chat.

Alex Littlejohn (05:52):
Thanks, Al because I woke up this morning and it was really great to see, on my LinkedIn site, just all of the recognition for women in the construction industry. It was terrific to see so much support coming to women across the insurance industry nationally and globally. So, thanks for that.

Al Tobin (06:12):
And thank you, Alex, for joining the team. Thanks, everybody for joining us today. I’m really excited, for our first session of Alex & Al: Coast to Coast. We'll look forward to communicating with you in the future and that's a wrap for today.

Outro (06:26):
Thank you for listening to this episode of Alex & Al: Coast to Coast. For more information, visit us at www.alliant.com.