Robert Hiscox has been called many things: a maverick, a risk taker, a bon vivant.
But make no mistake; he was a highly successful businessman who left a mark on the insurance industry.
Hiscox once told a reporter for Insurance Age that, if he were a dog, he’d be a terrier. That tenacious, snappy, take-no-prisoners style characterized his professional and personal lives.
Born in 1943, endowed with solid middle-class roots, he realized early on he wanted to earn the good things in life. He earned a degree in economics and law from Corpus Christi College at Cambridge.
His life changed course from law when he joined a small broking firm. In 1965, he went to work for his father’s Lloyd’s of London syndicate, which specialized in underwriting fine art. When his father died, Hiscox took over in a “bloodless coup.” He was 28.
Hiscox was proud of the firm’s courage to be different and not to follow the herd. He decided to write fine arts as a separate class of business, at a lower price, instead of lumping it in with household insurance as had always been done. It was a successful strategy.
Over the years, Hiscox built his father’s firm, which wrote £2 million (or slightly more than $3 million) a year, into today’s insurance giant. Today the company writes more than £1.7 billion (about $2.6 billion) annually, underwriting tough risks such as natural catastrophes, kidnap and ransom, piracy and terrorism.
Hiscox served as deputy chairman of Lloyd’s from 1993 to 1995. One of his crowning achievements was his role in the rescue of Lloyd’s, which was on the brink of insolvency. He supported the influx of corporate capital, which continues to underpin the market’s financial position today.
Always the maverick, in 2007 Hiscox sent shock waves through Lloyd’s by moving his company to tax-friendly Bermuda. Lloyd’s feared a mass exodus. Hiscox has been an outspoken critic of over-zealous regulators and politicians, often saying the former “try to take the risk out of insurance” and the latter “strangle the joy out of life.”
He does have good words to say about brokers, which his father taught him early were the company’s “bread and butter.” But he wishes brokers marketed themselves more aggressively.
After 43 years, Hiscox stepped down as chief executive in 2013. He recently took another risky leap, buying his local independent bookstore, taking on the Amazon juggernaut. (Though he admits using the giant supplier, he describes the company as “soulless.”)
Hiscox is a lifelong art lover with a personal collection so large he stores it in a warehouse. He served as treasurer of the Friends of the Tate Gallery, served on the U.K. Museums and Gallery Commission, and was a trustee and treasurer of the Campaign for Museums. He devotes much of his time to art and to his grandchildren.
