Embracing Risk

After Two Decades In The Insurance Industry, Chubb’s Asia–Pacific Regional President, Paul Mcnamee, Is Paving The Way Into The Future For The Insurer In The Region.

- Wendy Kay

While Paul McNamee’s foray into the insurance industry was triggered more by accident than design, he admits he learned how to calculate risk from an early age. Chubb’s Asia–Pacific Regional President was 20 when he returned home to Sydney after an extended gap year abroad and saw an opportunity to start his corporate career at Cigna International, a predecessor company of Chubb. Paul was fresh to the corporate world in 1995 and had little idea where the path would eventually lead him. In those early days, he developed a fascination for the industry, he tells The CEO Magazine. “I became a keen student of the business. I was genuinely interested, and I naturally enjoyed it,” he reflects. “Within a few years, I knew this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my career.”

As part of the commercial property team at Chubb, Paul worked as an insurer for the assets of many of Australia’s largest companies, including major banks, airports, airlines, retailers, investment funds and government organisations. “Determining the nature and pricing of the risk is what I found fascinating,” he says. It spurred him to take an active interest in how to run a business portfolio from a management standpoint.

In 1999, insurer ACE acquired Cigna’s global property and casualty (P&C) business, later taking over Chubb in 2016, retaining the well-known Chubb name. “Both organisations aligned as strong underwriting companies and had a solid alliance of what the future should hold,” Paul remembers.

“We identified, very early, the relative strengths of both organisations and as we charted the course for the integrated business, we had a very clear vision of what we wanted to achieve in both the long and short term. We invested in that future and we are now executing with a high degree of focus.”