What’s a more important sign that you are good at your job – hard skills or soft ones?
For clarity, let’s say that hard skills are technical expertise, knowledge, experience, that sort of thing.
Soft skills are relationship building, empathy, teamwork and emotional intelligence.
Which is more valuable depends on the job. If you are a chef, being good at cooking, the
hard skill, clearly trumps being nice to people.
Just watch Gordon Ramsay on the TV.
In insurance, things are changing. Hard skills used to be regarded as more important, with other behaviours, including bad behaviours, overlooked.
That’s no longer the case. Underwriters these days, especially those leading on risks need to be both hard and soft, a tricky thing to pull off, but increasingly vital.
We’ll get chapter-and-verse on those when the Gracechurch London’s Leading Underwriter report comes out early July.
The industry leaders nominated in the Report will typically have well rounded skill sets – a strong mixture of hard and soft abilities.
The most prominent reasons for London Underwriters to be respected as a market leader are these three:
1. Deep Technical Expertise – Most frequently cited, though expected of leaders and therefore “table stakes” – a minimum requirement.
2. Exceptional Client Service – Critical relationship building skill, “Impressive in front of clients and brokers,” and “stopping at nothing to achieve a result that works for both clients and brokers”.
3. Strong Leadership – Essential for market influence, e.g. “willing to take a lead position” and “not afraid to make the difficult choices”, and “hugely respected by peers”.
Expect to see those phrases appearing throughout the final Report.
Which names will be in, and which won’t make the cut? We will reveal all here.
Ben Bolton, Managing Director of Gracechurch, makes the point that leading underwriters are distinguished not by single strengths, but by their ability to combine technical mastery with strong interpersonal skills, commercial judgment, and adaptive leadership.
He says: “In such a competitive market, communication and collaboration become
increasingly important – especially when combined with more ‘traditional’ qualities.”
Other key themes you can expect to read about include those carriers that punch above their weight in terms of underwriter nominations from peers; carriers that show market dominance and the leading individual underwriters, overall, and across each of 11 featured classes of business.
Bolton adds: “The 2025 Leading Underwriter report is a celebration of the amazing talent across the London Market, and a window on the evolution of leadership in underwriting”