Alastair Swift: Willis cementing ‘deep specialty expertise’ as a ‘true differentiator’

As one of the world’s top five largest brokers – with a market capitalisation of over £14.5bn – Willis Towers Watson (WTW) is a true giant of the sector. 

So, when it announced that it would begin reusing Willis as the trading name for its broking businesses back in January 2025, there was a significant positive reaction from the insurance market. 

Speaking to Insurance Times about the broker’s strategy around this, head of corporate, risk and broking, global lines Alastair Swift explains that the move was intended to simplify the brand’s go-to-market identity, without representing a change in structure or strategy.

He says: “Willis is effectively what everybody knows us [as and] talks about us as.

”We’re still very clearly part of the WTW business and group overall but, ultimately, if you work on the insurance broking side, for an insurer or for a client, you’ve been calling us Willis forever. So we thought why not make life simple for everybody?”

Swift, who notes that he can now be known more simply as head of specialties for Willis, joined the broker in 2008 when it acquired Hilb Rogal and Hobbs Company (HRH), where he was previously working, in a £1.5bn deal.

He initially ran the Willis London and Bermuda casualty business for around a year, before being sent to New York to run the placement aspect of the firm’s North American retail business. 

After two years, in 2011, WTW asked Swift to step up to become chief executive for global placement and he was brought back to London. He then spent a two-year stint as global head of transportation between 2014 and 2015, before he was made head of corporate risk and broking for Great Britain (GB) in 2016. 

Following six years in this role, Swift was promoted to his current position, which he has held since January 2022. 

He says: “My role involves running our specialty businesses on a global basis, which includes lines like marine, aviation, credit, our crisis management business, property and casualty and other specialisms like natural resources and construction.

”These specialisms have really been the cornerstone of where we’ve looked to grow since the failed Aon merger [in 2021] and we’ve had phenomenal success, growing them by over 10% on a compound annual growth rate basis (cagr) over the last couple of years, which has been great fun.

“That, alongside the GB retail business, which has performed similarly, means we’ve had a pretty good run of it recently.” 

Continuation of the plan

Despite a strong position in the market, even the largest firms cannot rest on their laurels – and Willis has made much of its desire to continue to improve and grow. 

In a statement to investors on its plans for 2025 and beyond, made in December 2024, WTW said it was focused on accelerating “performance, enhancing our efficiency and optimising our portfolio”. 

Swift tells Insurance Times that “the 2025 plan is really a continuation of the plan we’ve had in place for a few years” and that it was “constantly developing, as all good plans should do”. 

He adds: “But, at its core, we’re aiming to reach a point with the business where it is one truly multinational operation with deep specialty expertise. I don’t just mean specialisation in terms of the lines we work in, but also in specific industries where we want to lead geographically – an example of that is real estate, where we are seen as a real leader across North America and certainly in the UK and bits of Europe.”

This drive towards specialisation is what Swift calls a “true differentiator” for Willis among its peers. 

He continues: “Others may be really interested in breadth, but we’re really interested in expertise and being leaders in our chosen fields. That way, we’ll be able to deliver the very best outcomes for our clients, which we also want to make sure is supported by great data, technology and client insight.” 

The how of it

A desire to specialise and deliver exceptional service to clients is sensible – but it is how this will be achieved that will be watched with interest by market participants. 

Willis brings scale to all its initiatives, with the result often being that it can leverage efficiencies unavailable to smaller organisations. 

Swift explains: ”There are bits of our strategy that others might also have, but what brings it together for us is dedication and focus on providing clients with a differentiated experience. 

“That means we need to tailor that client service to the segments we’re dealing with so that it’s pertinent, whether they want to self-service or want their broker to do everything for them.”

One major initiative Willis is undertaking currently is the creation of a self-built broker technology platform, designed to accommodate “every risk” that Willis deals with. Swift explains that the platform is global, so Willis can utilise “one version of the truth” across the world for clients and “only have to enter data into the system once”.

This platform is also intended to speed up billing, processing and access to documentation for clients. Crucially, however, the data can also be fed into actuarial and analytical models, which Swift says allows Willis to begin “providing clients an almost automated insight into what they can be doing from a risk perspective, which is a far stronger proposition than providing that stuff on an ad hoc basis”. 

The scale, breadth and specialism of Willis magnifies the impact of this platform, allowing it to accelerate the provision of actionable information. 

Swift adds: “It’s a journey, but we’re a long way on it. We want to make sure we continue to develop [the platform] and deliver it to clients because it will be a game changer.

“If you can take the noise out and get to the point where insurance brokers and intermediaries are providing the service that clients really value while automating less important things, then we’re going to be in a far stronger position as a business and as an industry than we are today.” 

Inorganic growth

Outside of a desire to grow organically, Willis is also seeking opportunities to fast track its upward trajectory through M&A, which Swift calls “the shift that really came out of the 2025 planning process”. 

He explains: ”Alongside this organic growth strategy, we are also looking at what we can do from an inorganic perspective within the business. Data is going to become ever more important from a business perspective and, therefore, having a certain scale is going to have some relevance as we [go] through the next decade. 

”We won’t get [where we want to be] with exceptional growth alone. When we look at the organic growth of the insurance side of the business, we’ve been peer leading, but [other brokers] have been more aggressive with what they’ve done with M&A.”

With organic growth having placed Willis on ”a really solid footing”, Swift says that the broker will “now make sure that we use that platform” to “look at driving inorganic growth over the next few years”.

In terms of acquisition targets, Swift says that Willis is “open to anything that we think, in some way, is going to improve the proposition for our client base”. More specifically, however, he notes that filling geographic gaps that could help to supplement scale or expertise would be one area of particular interest. 

He adds: “There are always opportunities in pretty much every geography and I wouldn’t exclude the UK from that. There are copious numbers of brokers still in the UK as well as, for example, amazing insurtech, claims management, risk management and consultancy businesses. 

“There’s a plethora of different things that you could look at that could enhance what we’re doing in this marketplace, but don’t forget that, when we make international acquisitions, they benefit the business in the UK too.” 

While Swift did not specify set targets for acquisitions, it seems clear that Willis now sees it as a strategic imperative that it must supplement organic growth, driven by specialisation and technology, with acquisitions.

What remains to be seen is the shape of this growth – and how exactly Willis’ updated strategy bears fruit.