Diary of an Insurer: Peach Pi’s Ryan Bendelow

Monday

Monday morning and no alarm clock is needed as my one-year-old daughter and five-year-old son see to it that we are all up, bright and not so breezy for the week ahead, well before the sun rears its head.

I love a good to-do list (who doesn’t?!), so my first Monday morning task is to set out my priorities for the day and the week safe in the knowledge that inevitably, these will actually be changing by the hour.

However, I really value a structure to get through my week in the most effective way.

Later in the morning, I get together on a video call with our underwriting team for our weekly meeting.

We discuss new opportunities, schemes that have been agreed and are being built for launch and other underwriting priorities for the week ahead.

As well as having a good catch-up on everyone’s weekend activities. This weekend one of the team had been to see Shania Twain in concert – but I promised not to reveal his name.

In the afternoon, I met with one of our brokers and their software partner for an exciting demo of the quoting tool they’re developing for a soon-to-be launched scheme product. There’s been great progress.

Tuesday

I am very fortunate to have built some working space at the end of my garden. I call it the Boffice….it started out as an office but ended up as a multi-purpose hybrid of a bar and office, much to my wife’s dismay.

The bar opening hours are obviously strictly after 5.30pm - unless it’s been a very tough week.

I worked from the Boffice today, meeting with two potential new partners on video calls. One was a broker who is building a niche property scheme, the other a relatively new MGA looking to expand the lines that they can offer – both meetings presented genuine opportunities that we’ll be moving forward with.

I also booked up to attend two large insurance events in 2024, including the British Insurance Brokers’ Association’s Conference. We love attending physical events – it’s been the best way to spread the Peach Pi word and drive new opportunities through the door.

Wednesday

Wednesday is always a very early start so on this occasion, I really do have to set an alarm rather than relying on being jumped on with a loud shout of “Wake up Daddy” from my son, Jenson.

I travel up from Kent to St Albans by train to visit the Peach Pi/NPA Insurance Head Office. Today I use some of the quiet time on the train to clear emails and prep for meetings.

After a nice fresh walk from St Albans station to the office, I’m straight into a workshop that is being led by our development underwriter, Jack Pope-Costa, and focussed on building out greater structure around our end-to-end process for new schemes, to ensure consistency as we grow.

It’s really pleasing to hear the recap of the outputs at the end. Time well spent for sure.

In the afternoon, I join our executive team for our weekly leadership meeting.

We’ve developed a great structure to the meeting involving a quick fire round to each highlight items of importance and then we’ll do a deeper dive on those items that require a more granular discussion and decisions.

I really enjoy the weekly trip to head office. You can’t beat some face-to-face time.

Thursday

I always love having some time in the City and today, after dropping my little daughter off early at nursery, I’m hopping on the train again and heading into Cannon Street station.

I met an old colleague for breakfast. I find it important to keep in touch with industry friends and confidantes. It’s always served me well to have this network around me.

While in the City, I had a meeting with another insurer to discuss opportunities to potentially work together and then I spent some time with one of our existing scheme partners to discuss the scheme growth and potential expansion.

Friday

The end of the week is near and as normal, I use Friday mornings to conduct my team one-to-ones. I find that it’s good timing to reflect on the week that has just passed, as well as set out a bit of a focus for the coming week.

Mid-morning, I managed to get some time to nip to my son’s school, which is in the village that we live in. It was his fifth birthday this week and the school always makes a nice fuss of the birthday boys and girls, inviting parents along and getting the whole school to sing Happy Birthday.

It was very wholesome and I managed to obtain some great footage to embarrass him with on his 18th birthday.

In the afternoon I jumped on a call to see a demo from a potential new supplier – showing their online commercial reinstatement calculator tool, which we are looking to use with one of our new schemes.

I also had a catch-up with our CEO, Russell White, as I do every Friday afternoon.

It’s been a hectic week and tomorrow involves hosting my son’s birthday party at a soft play with 20 five-year-olds running around. Full disclosure: I opened the bar slightly early today.