Diary of an Insurer: Swiss Re’s Leo Dixon

Monday

Sunday afternoon brought touchdown after the whirlwind North American leg of our P&C Re Claims’ AI Activation tour. 

Speedrunning Toronto, Armonk and Mexico City in five days, with snowstorm-driven delays in New York cancelling a planned client meeting, makes Monday a very welcome home-office day. 

6am is my morning anchor. In a (sometimes vain) attempt to stave off my morning coffee for an hour, I typically try to start my working-from-home days with the gym, the turbo trainer or a seaside walk. 

Today, the bracing south-coast sea air proves the perfect kick-start to a busy day.

My first priority is all about reconnection. First, a short debrief with some of my leadership team, then a scan combining overnight news with internal feedback to find out what moved while I was in transit and what needs actioning this week.

Evening is family time and my two young daughters provide the best switch-off there is. 

They don’t care about reserving philosophies or complex claims matters - they care about homework, snacks and whether I’m actually paying attention when playing Uno! 

After a travel-heavy week, the goal is simple: be present, not just physically back.

Tuesday

With a two-and-a-half-hour commute to the London office from home, my usual routine is to come up, stay two nights in the City and make sure those long office days really work for me.

For roughly 90 minutes of my commute, the less-than-reliable Wi-Fi means I can work undisturbed by the seemingly endless pinging of incoming emails. 

Today, I tune into The High-Performance Podcast for its timely reminder that leadership is a skill you practice, not a title you hold.

In the London office, the tempo changes immediately: quick chats, fast questions, corridor conversations. Claims is a team sport, and it’s hard to do the best work if you never bump into each other. 

Today is heavy on large-loss rhythm: check-in with the team, alignment with our catastrophe perils colleagues, and a meeting with underwriters for that crucial cross-pollination of intel. 

Underwriters know the contract intent and the nuances of clauses; claims professionals know how those words behave under stress. 

When a major event hits, we’re all looking at the same thing from different angles - and we want to triangulate those different inputs as early as possible to help us understand our potential exposure. 

Dinner is spent with a couple of claims colleagues - half social, half debrief, entirely necessary.

Wednesday

Much of the day is spent reviewing our Claims Reimagination programme, our blueprint for our future claims process, leveraging AI for better client outcomes. 

The insights and recommendations from last week’s activation sessions are instrumental to helping ensure we make the upcoming sessions in Europe even more impactful.

We’re always looking at ways to support our highly experienced claims professionals in becoming even more agile and responsive - and AI augmentation is a key enabler. 

Certainly, we can see opportunities for trend and outlier scanning in the large bordereaux we receive, which in turn we hope will drive better quality of claims information being transmitted between clients, brokers and us. 

In a soft market in particular, shared success matters.

A long call to the folks back home breaks up the evening nicely. 

Thursday

An early morning walk through the City is the perfect head-clearer ahead of our Global Claims Leadership Team call, where we have an opportunity to update the team on how we’re moving forward with the implementation of AI. 

It’s no secret that claims has historically not been considered the most ‘glamorous’ insurance function, but opportunities like the one AI is presenting to the industry are a chance to hammer home the relevance and importance of claims to the success of our companies. 

Later, I’m in a working session with a colleague, working our way through how we best capture and transfer knowledge within our teams. 

Experienced claims managers carry archives of claims knowledge in their heads - from how we’ve handled similar cases in the past, to market practices around the world, to which arguments land and where things typically derail. 

With a number of retirements likely across the insurance industry in the next three-to-four-years, protecting claims know-how is central to building resilience in one of our core functions.

The evening is taken up with my commute back to Poole. 

Two-and-a-half hours is always a stretch - particularly when you’re looking forward to being home. 

But as the coast materialises in the latter part of the journey, I am reminded anew that my decision to live here is no sacrifice.

Friday 

Fridays are home days as often as I can make them. 

I start with a short gym session, then clear the decks: emails, admin and the actions that have multiplied while I’ve been in meetings all week.

Fridays are for stitching the week together: clearing decisions, nudging the right threads forward, and making sure we’re not mistaking busyness for progress.

I’m not allergic to perfection but I am allergic to waiting for “perfect”. 

If we can prepare reports, presentations, and build tools that are 90% there and that genuinely help colleagues today, we learn faster, iterate faster, and deliver more value than we ever do in a two-year quest for flawlessness.

I try to end the week by recognising people. 

It might not always get applause but claims is the value proposition of insurance – the moment a promise is turned into payment, often under scrutiny and often under time pressure, but always with sound judgement required. 

A good claims team is a competitive advantage and I never want ours to forget that.

And then it is time to switch lanes. The weekend is sailing territory if the weather cooperates. 

I race competitively, and these days, I also spend time coaching youngsters, including my daughters. I’ve become less of an all-year-round sailor over the years, in that I’m no longer out cracking ice off boats in January to get on the water, but between April and October I’m happiest on the water. 

The sea is the best reminder I know of that you don’t control conditions, you control decisions and the applicability of that lesson to claims is never lost on me.