A day in the life of Mr. Bryce: Jim Bryce, the CEO of IPC Re Holdings follows the "party" line at the annual September Rendezvous in Monte Carlo. Though the following year's renewals are typically sealed in October in Baden Baden, insurance and reinsurance bigwigs show up just to be sure they don't get left behind

Risk & Insurance, Dec, 2004 by Roger Crombie

Jim Bryce emerges from the elevator at the Meridien Beach Plaza Hotel on Monte Carlo's waterfront, and looks at his watch. It reads 7:55 a.m. Wearing slacks and an open-necked shirt, in contrast to his more traditional buttoned-down style, he fits right in with the insurance crowd moving through the lobby. In the principality famed for its leisure pursuits, he is about to embark on the most intense phase of two weeks' work in Europe.

Bryce's experience at Monte Carlo is fairly typical for the central players attending the Rendezvous de Septembre, the reinsurance-focused "meetings in September" that marked their 48th annual incarnation this year. Monte Carlo is not about making deals for the following year's renewal season; that happens a few weeks later, at Baden Baden in Germany, or at the annual meeting of the Property Casualty Insurers Association in Washington, D.C. Monte Carlo in September is all about meetings, conversations and gaining industry insights.

"Monte Carlo is a way of underlining relationships, sharing opinions, forming a consensus, if you will," says Bryce, CEO of IPC Re Holdings, a company founded in Bermuda in 1993 by American International Group Inc. to provide catastrophe reinsurance coverage to the world after Hurricane Andrew.

Of the "Class of '93," the eight property catastrophe reinsurers that brought $4 billion to Bermuda and the market, IPC Re has stayed closest to its original plan, concentrating almost exclusively on property catastrophe even as other "classmates" have broadened their portfolios or been subsumed by larger enterprises.

For Bryce, the Rendezvous is the second half of a crush of meetings with clients, brokers, friends and colleagues that begins in London several days before he makes his way to Monte Carlo for more.

This Monday morning, he starts a meeting-packed day at a breakfast with three representatives of an aviation underwriter in the Meridien's graceful, light-filled restaurant and discusses "rates, terms and conditions, and how the Jan. 1 renewal season looks," he says. "It's described as 'social business.' We throw out ideas, talk about the market, capacity changes, developments ... overall, Monte Carlo is an intelligence-gathering exercise."

Those who have not taken part in this "social business" are always surprised that Monte Carlo has little in the way of a formal program, other than a grand debate near the end of the event, which relatively few attend.

On top of that, the settings and surroundings are frankly grand; even the names of the venues are as full of promise as a bad underwriter. At Monte Carlo, the participants make their own schedules and fill their own agendas, which they view as a very efficient way of doing business.

The talk at Bryce's breakfast turns at one point to Converium, as will most conversations that week. With Hurricane Ivan yet to strike Florida, Converium's difficulties are the main topic in the early going this year. "It seems like every year, conversations coalesce around one major subject," Bryce says. "Converium this year, Scor last year, Gerling two years ago." In 2001, of course, the Rendezvous was all but derailed by the events of Sept. 11.

After the hour-long breakfast, Bryce bumps into some colleagues in the hotel foyer, before making his way across the street to the bus stop. The bus pulls in, Bryce proffers his pass, and he is off to the Grand Hotel, to spend an hour with the chief executive officer of a major U.K. manufacturer of composite materials, "one of our biggest customers in terms of premium and commitment," he explains.

At 10:30 a.m., at the nearby Hotel de Paris, Bryce sits down with members of a major Lloyd's syndicate, a broker and two reinsurance buyers, to continue a conversation that had started the week before in London. In these meetings, he is joined throughout the day by Peter Cozens or Stephen Bardill, IPC Re's senior vice president-underwriting, and vice president-underwriting, respectively, for non-North American business.

The relentless pace varies little throughout the day.

Bryce's 10:30 meeting is followed by an 11 a.m. discussion with a retrocession broker. IPC Re does little retro business, in or out, so the meeting lasts just half an hour. The unspoken rule is that everyone you meet is allocated a minimum of half an hour. More important contacts rate an hour; and the most important join you for meals. Bryce will follow this routine from 8 a.m. until late into the evening, as do his peers, one of whom has 51 appointments booked into a 72-hour span.

At 11:30 a.m., Bryce spends an hour with a modeling agency--a risk modeling agency, that is--to discuss the estimates for claims likely to arise from the storms that lashed Florida this hurricane season.

A short walk in the mounting heat from the Hotel de Paris, Bryce then attends a lunch at the Metropole Hotel. The noontime affair, hosted by a broker, includes one of IPC Re's main European and U.S. clients.

After lunch, Bryce heads back to the Hotel de Paris for a 2 p.m. meeting with an actuarial firm. Half an hour later, he's in discussions with a broker and a large French reinsurance client. At 3 p.m., he's chatting with a head-hunting firm.