When the chief executive officer of Valiant Insurance responded to a question about near-term goals for his organization recently, “taking a breather” from the process of hiring a team of experienced professionals was high on the list.

“I probably could have given you a much more creative answer earlier in the year, because we were still doing a lot of the building out process at that point,” said Gary Dubois, who heads one of the newest U.S. E&S/specialty operations during a mid-August interview.

“By the end of the second quarter [of 2008], we really reached the end of the first phase of our development. We had the company. We had the right management team in place. The framework for the infrastructure is now there for us,” he said.

Valiant, the U.S. specialty division of Bermuda-based Ariel Re, officially launched in October 2007 when Ariel purchased the Valiant as a shell from Zurich North America. Since that time, Valiant has signed on nearly 30 professionals to staff up the specialty insurance organization.

Consistent with the company's tagline–”Because Experience Matters”–many came to Valiant with decades of experience in their respective specialties, including Mr. Dubois, a 24-year veteran of the specialty lines arena.

Getting the right people has been the second biggest challenge for the start-up, according to Mr. Dubois. Finding the right platform was the first, he said.

“We looked at 50 or 60 different vehicles–underwriting companies and shells–before finding and finally closing on Valiant,” he said, noting that the process took a year from start to finish.

From July 2007, when Ariel first found Valiant through the second quarter of this year, Mr. Dubois reported spending “countless hours sifting through resumes, holding interviews and going through negotiations with individuals.”

“Without the right people to make up the framework for the organization, the vehicle in and of itself didn't do us any good at all,” he said. These individuals “will establish a reputation for Valiant going-forward,” he said. “We are going to be viewed as the end-product of the individuals that come on board early.”

Looking ahead, he said “We're going to slow down on the hiring front,” noting that efforts for the remainder of this year and heading into 2009 would focus on handling submission flow.

“Let's get the right accounts on the books,” he said, summing up the goal of Phase Two in Valiant's evolution.

One common element in start-up failures is to “get carried away with the expense side, which puts you in mindset of then operating to the top line to support the expenses as opposed to writing good accounts because they make sense [to add] to the books,” Mr. Dubois said.

Still, Valiant did add three new team members in October.

o Leigh McMullan, formerly of ACE USA, joined as an assistant vice president in the professional liability division to focus on media professional liability, law firms, architects and engineers, as well as network liability and privacy coverages.

o Ted Nienburg and Michael Vita joined the casualty division from Liberty International Underwriters. Mr. Nienburg, who will be a vice president at Valiant focused on developing the company's primary casualty product line, has 21 years of experience in program and brokerage business. Mr. Vita, with a 15-year track record, will serve as an assistant vice president in the excess casualty division.

More information on Valiant's team, its history, key milestones and distinguishing characteristics of its U.S. specialty businesses is presented in summary form below.

NU E&S/ Specialty Lines Extra's profile of Valiant is the last of a series looking at three of the newest Bermuda companies to enter the U.S. E&S market in the past two years with fresh capital and A-minus A.M. Best ratings. See September and October editions for similar profiles of Montpelier US and Ironshore Insurance.

NAME: VALIANT INSURANCE GROUP

Milestones: Bermuda-based Ariel Re purchased Valiant as a shell from Zurich North America in Oct. 2007 to serve as the platform for a U.S. specialty insurance.

Locations: New York City (most lines) and Albany, N.Y. (lawyers E&O)

Authorizations/Approvals: Valiant is admitted in 47 states and D.C., with applications being filed in Nevada, Hawaii and Mass. CEO Gary Dubois also anticipates having a nonadmitted vehicle available in the very near future.

No. of Employees: 28

Who's In Charge: President and CEO Gary Dubois joined Ariel in Oct. 2006, leaving his prior position as global chief underwriting officer specialty casualty lines–D&O and professional liability–at Liberty Insurance Underwriters. Before joining Liberty Mutual's specialty start-up division in 1999, Mr. Dubois had held leadership positions at Reliance National, having joined as one of its first underwriters in 1987, and started his career at CNA in 1984.

More People To Know:

o Scott Bayer, SVP of Valiant's casualty division joined in May 2008 from LIU. The 20-year industry veteran held prior positions at Caliber One, General Star and Aetna.

o Mr. Bayer's counterparts in Valiant's three main underwriting divisions, all with 18-20 years experience, are: Lori Marino, SVP, management liability, formerly with ACE USA; Adrian Scott, SVP, professional liability, whose resume includes a number of major brokers, including Marsh; Joseph O'Connor, SVP marine and energy, formerly with LIU.

o John DiBlanda, CFO and COO, who worked as a CPA for KPMG, and held industry positions in insurance and reinsurance, most recently as CFO at start-ups Delos and Naxos.

o Ursula Kerrigan, general counsel, who previously held positions as chief counsel and director of compliance at LIU. Mr. Dubois highlighted her multi-faceted background, which includes work in insurance-related private practice and litigation at a New York law firm, and claims work for Gulf Insurance Group.

o Jeff Bossert, chief claims officer, who has 30 years of experience in the full spectrum of specialty lines that Valiant will target, most recently serving as XL's North American chief claims officer.

Target Product Mix: “Part of our mandate is to add to the diversification” to Ariel, Mr. Dubois said, noting that with a heavy-weighting toward first-party lines at Ariel, Valiant will focus on third-party lines.

Ariel also doesn't have ready access to the small-to-middle market, he said. With an eye toward creating a broad-based U.S. book geographically (once regulatory approvals are all in place), Valiant will focus on the lower end of the large market down through the middle and smaller accounts, he said.

“We look for areas that have some sort of a specialty flavor to them,” said Mr. Dubois, listing casualty, D&O, E&O, and marine & energy as key units of Valiant.

“Our strategy will be to look at the full breadth of the U.S. market, and then look for segments and niches that we believe are still appropriately priced or there's reasonable level of competition.”

“The commonality across all of our divisions is technical ability” to identify specialty areas with reasonable margins.

Describing his vision for the casualty division, Mr. Bayer said it will consist of two operations–primary, with $5 million of capacity, and excess, with $25 million.

“What makes a great primary account doesn't make a good excess account and vice versa,” he said, explaining the decision to keep the disciplines separate.

In addition to writing “typical E&S-type” individual risk accounts, which “will run across the gamut from construction, manufacturing, premises exposures, and new ventures,” Mr. Bayer said the casualty division will also entertain programs.

The right candidates are niche-type specialty programs–”things we can get our arms around, build fences around,” also describing these are programs with track records for which the producers demonstrate some added value.

Out of Bounds? “We've made it a point not to take anything off the table,” said Mr. Dubois, adding, however, that certain lines might be challenging to enter given the firm's A-minus rating. “While our financials are impeccable, rating agencies tend to levy a charge against new companies.” As a result, it would be problematic to make a strong push to enter a ratings-sensitive line like surety, for example.

Distribution Strategies: Valiant will distribute its products through retailers and wholesalers, with distributors on the retail side ranging from “second and third-tier regionals and superregionals up through the Marshes, Aons and Willises of the world,” Mr. Dubois said.

Mr. Bayer said that while phone calls started coming from wholesalers looking on his second day on the new job–with both prior relationships and market conditions prompting the influx of calls–by necessity, appointments are being limited for now.

“I don't want service to drop in my second month of operation,” he said. “We're trying to sell something different”–a model in which underwriters get back to people extremely quickly. “If I start receiving submissions from everybody in the country, then I won't be able to fulfill that promise,” he said.

“The reason they're coming here is the relationships they had before. They know the people,” he said, noting that the financial backing behind Valiant is also a draw. (Private investors, including The Blackstone Group, contributed $1 billion to start up Ariel in late 2005.)

Organizational synergies: While Ariel writes some D&O insurance, mainly A-Side coverage, Ariel's focus is on the Fortune 1000 accounts that make their way to Bermuda because of outsized capacity needs, Mr. Dubois said, noting that type of business won't be Valiant's focus.

“What they don't see on the island, especially in the management liability arena, [are accounts] below the Fortune 1000. Those tend to get placed pretty much exclusively on a domestic basis, and those are what we'll target.”

Mr. Dubois also said there's no real overlap with Atrium Underwriters, acquired by Ariel last year.

Atrium oversees two syndicate operations at Lloyd's, one of which focuses heavily on international reinsurance and energy arena. In contrast, Valiant's emphasis is more on the marine side.

The other syndicate does some U.S. casualty, “but their positions are primarily behind the scenes, as a line-slip participant,” he said.

Competitive Advantages: Mr. Dubois believes Valiant's strength is in the individuals associated with the organization.

“Valiant, itself, doesn't have a reputation in the industry yet, but the people we hire certainly do. Their personal reputations for credibility, for integrity, and professionalism [are] the foundation that will establish the Valiant persona.”

Summing up characteristics of employees finding a home at Valiant, Mr. Dubois said “they tend to focus more on technical underwriting than premium flow.”

“I like underwriters who enjoy the profession of underwriting and understand the dynamics [beyond] just selling a policy”–knowing the coverages, appropriate pricing levels and how to “interact effectively with claims, with actuarial, with finance.”

“We look for individuals who enjoy putting all of those parts together,” he said, adding that this requires “a balance of discipline and relationships in the market.”

As a new organization, “we say no a lot,” he said. “So if our folks can say no, but say it intelligently, where the degree of elocution in expressing that to the brokers and clients [is such] that they will come back again, that's a real skill set.

“Those are the individuals we have been looking for,” he said.

Special Reports /

Experienced Team On Board At Valiant Insurance

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