4 months ago
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IronRock Insurance Company has a new home and a new leader. It’s looking next to grow its talent pool.
The general insurer has relocated its offices to Hope Road in Kingston, taking up office space that was formerly occupied by Stocks and Securities Limited.
Newly promoted CEO of IronRock, Christian Watt, said in an interview with The Financial Gleaner that after nearly a decade at Braemar Avenue, also in Kingston, the company had outgrown the nearly 2,000 square feet of space it occupied there.
“IronRock’s approach has always been to keep everything lean with the team, or as lean as possible,” said Watt, who was formerly IronRock’s general manager of marketing and production. However,“I think we’ve squeezed as much juice out of that fruit as we could get,” he said of the Braemar base.
IronRock ended last year with a profit of $72 million, its preliminary results show, but the figure could change with the final computation of reinsurance charges.
“That (reinsurance reconciliation) is being done now. We’ve received feedback from both (actuaries and reinsurers) and we don’t anticipate any negative changes on those numbers,” Watt said, adding that the switch to IFRS 17 in 2023 is still causing the presentation of the accounts to be delayed, especially the actuarial reviews.
“That’s where we found the delay this year. We put out a notice for the delayed audited (report) but we’re anticipating that we’ll hit the 30th of April for sure,” he said.
Insurance revenue at IronRock was $1.75 billion for the financial year ended December 2024. Those results were delivered under founding Managing Director Evan Thwaites, who is providing guidance to the new leadership to ensure an easy transition.
“My title is executive director and I provide any assistance – technical assistance, guidance – that the new management team needs. I go into office a few days a week (and) work from home the rest of the time, just to ensure that we have a smooth handover,” Thwaites told the Financial Gleaner.
Watt, who became CEO of April 1, was also appointed to the board of IronRock.
Last year, the company did well across all segments, after buttressing its team through “a bit of recruitment of some senior underwriters or some more technical, well-respected underwriters in the market last year,” Watt said.
“We were able to recruit one who brought with him quite a bit of experience and relationships with our broker partners, where we write most of our business.”
The momentum from those hires has continued into 2025, he added.
IronRock has prided itself in the past on carving out business in the competitive insurance field by going after the higher-end market, including boats, marine cargo and fleets.
“I would call it more niche boutique writing than higher end. There are segments of the market that are underserved from the perspective of insurers presenting themselves in the space with solutions,” Watt noted.
“Our non-property and non-motor segments – things like marine, accident, liability insurance – have been fairly competitive and we have been able to secure decent commercial accounts.”
In addition to commercial insurance, IronRock has been shifting into third party and general motor coverage, and has a more pronounced presence in the digital space through amped-up advertising.
“In the motor space, we do have some pretty niche, well-performing, good performing products that we’re trying to push and they’re doing well for us on the loss ratios,” Watt said, pointing particularly to the company’s Matrimotor policy.
“We’re the only insurer with a policy geared towards married couples. It’s kind of trying to capture the family unit where we do your cars for your family, plus your home, et cetera, all as a bundle,” he said of the IronRock offering.
“In particular, in the car-insurance segment, we have a special package for married couples where they can share their NCD (no claim discount) together as husband and wife. They get additional benefits. They get all the bells and whistles on the policies. All the additional riders are included at no charge on those policies,” he added.
There are also concessions through IronRock’s “lady-driven policy for female drivers and executive motor policy for our C-suite execs,” he added, while noting that the losses tend to be far less in those niche areas of the market, and therefore a better business bet.
For example: “Our data show that married couples are five times less likely to be involved in an accident than single people,” Watt declared, adding that the revelation came from data crunched by IronRock, which runs a tech-focused operation.
“We … crunched, all sorts of permutations – ages, genders, occupations, marital status, location – trying to find where the correlations were between ‘the losses’ and ‘the clients without losses’ and one of those correlations was being married,” he said.
Meanwhile, company’s recruitment drive is continuing.
“Yes, we have a larger space; the plan for the next two to three years is to grow into it, but in a targeted fashion. We won’t be going out to hire a dozen underwriters arbitrarily. We’ll be, seeking some targeted recruitment,” he said.
The new office space acquired at Hope Road is nearly three times larger, spanning 5,700 square feet.
The property is owned by the estate of Gwendolyn Theresa Lewis, according to Titles Office documents. It was transferred as a gift to SIMDO Limited of 14 Ruthven Road in St Andrew September 2023. SIMDO has Jason Lindo, Deborah Nunes-Boorman and Shannon Boorman as directors.
Caught up in scandal and shuttered for business, Stocks and Securities vacated the property. Watt said the building was unused for two years, and that IronRock ended up as the tenant, with SIMDO as its landlord, after the deal with a restaurant fell through.
“We had it on our agenda to start looking for a place. When we started seriously looking last year, a real estate agent mentioned to us that the deal that was on the table (for the restaurant) fell through,” he said, adding that IronRock jumped at the opportunity and that the team is now making itself at home.
“It’s a fantastic location. It’s an excellent building – lots of space, lots of parking, a great location. It allows for great signage and the team is very comfortable. We renovated inside to fit our style and culture,” said Watt.
At Baremar, around 80 to 90 per cent of the company’s energy needs was satisfied by renewables, and IronRock is planning to do the same for the current facility, using solar panels, he said.
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