Dear friend,

“Whether the subject is reinsurance or insurance, wholesale or direct, we’ve created a collaborative, flexible yet robust platform freeing our brokers to focus on serving clients without the organizational constraints and interference that are commonplace in today’s broking business.”

These are the words of Peter Garvey, Integro president and COO — quite a quote, and something I’m sure many entrepreneurial brokers feel the same way about in today’s box-ticking corporate world.

He was speaking after confirming that he had managed to lure the dynamic duo of Ron Whyte and Julian Samengo-Turner away from Guy Carp’s GC Fac division to head up a London-based international/Fac operation.

The funny thing is that I know Ron from a million years ago when he was boss of the Johnson & Higgins London property team and I was a (very) junior broker working at Gil y Carvajal, J&H’s Spanish partner in the now defunct Unison network.

And as editor of Fac I have interviewed the Ron and Julian show on numerous occasions — (including a short-lived web-streamed interview) — they were always disarmingly frank — with hindsight perhaps a little too frank for a global multinational like Marsh!

Well, they’ll certainly be given a free rein to do what they want now — you can’t get a freer corporate environment than a start-up. Good luck Ron and Julian — free at last.

Check out the interview from our inaugural issue of Fac a year ago.

It’s quite a souvenir issue these days — Ron, Julian and Elliot Richardson — none of them are in the same place any more!

Hiring these two and other members of the global GC Fac team will give Integro a leg-up into high-margin reinsurance business at a time when everyone I speak to in the market is saying that they think they are struggling to make an impact in a highly competitive area.

And everyone knows the uphill struggles of Benfield’s corporate risks division are written in red all over its results

Until today Integro was a bit of a multi-million dollar market joke.

Now nobody is laughing any more.

Happy Easter

PS. I’m on holiday with my family next week — but I’ve convinced Mairi MacDonald to keep you company while I’m away.