Chris Jones: New IUA boss seeks to put trade body ‘on the front foot’ with three pillar plan

Chris Jones describes his route into the chief executive role at trade body the International Underwriting Association (IUA) as “the longest succession plan ever” following a 20-year tenure – and counting – at the London focused membership organisation.

Previously director of the IUA’s underwriting and claims function, Jones formally took up the helm in May 2025 after long-standing IUA boss Dave Matcham retired a few months earlier in March.

As part of the appointment process, Jones was required “to present my vision for the IUA” to the trade association’s board, building on the organisation’s key tenets of improving underwriting and claims technical skills, supporting the legal and regulatory landscape surrounding the insurance industry and contributing to market modernisation and digitisation.

Jones’ proposed priorities consist of three focus areas, which Jones tells Insurance Times reflect his learnings from his IUA service to date, as well as the “increasing importance” of certain topics to the IUA’s 80 business members.

He says: “The good thing about coming into the role, particularly as an internal candidate, is I’ve ran our underwriting and claims team and I’ve run our legal and regulatory team, so I understand the dynamics of both working at a trade association and also dealing with external stakeholders and our membership, to understand a little more clearly what I think our members want and need from us.”

The first of Jones’ priority pillars is to build on the IUA’s existing underwriting and claims focus, seeking to provide greater thought leadership to the London market – this could be delivered through authored or co-authored research reports, for example.

A prime element of this pillar, Jones believes, will be close collaboration across the 40 to 50 odd underwriting and claims groups that sit within the IUA. Around 1,500 insurance professionals are currently involved in these groups.

Jones wants these single business line focused committees – covering products such as aviation, marine, professional indemnity and directors’ and officers’ (D&O), for example – to debate in more detail emerging and systemic risk approaches, whether products are fit for purpose and if claims processes meet customer expectations.

“London really will live or die by its underwriting and claims expertise,” he says.

“Our key selling point in London is our underwriting and claims expertise [around] the bespoke specialty risks that come to London. To my mind, operational efficiency, market modernisation and the legal and regulatory [landscape], they build into making sure that we have the right conditions for underwriting and claims expertise.

“So, one of our priorities is to bring that back into focus and concentrate on those areas, meaning that we want to develop more thought leadership work within the groups that we’re involved in.”

To help deliver this priority, Jones has split up his old job role, creating distinct director of underwriting and director of claims positions – rather than keeping the post with a combined oversight.

In June 2025, the IUA announced two internal promotions to fulfil these roles, seeing Tom Hughes step into the director of underwriting position, while Joe Shaw took on the director of claims post.

Both were previously senior underwriting and claims executives.

Jones’ second priority pillar involves “looking at risk a bit more holistically” by removing past “siloed approaches” and having more “engagement with the chief risk officer community”.

He explains: “We’ve tended to look at things that are class of business specific issues. But the way we see risk at the moment is – in particular [around] some emerging risks and systemic risks – they just overarch lots of different [business lines. For example, artificial intelligence] or cyber risk.

“Each market will have a slightly different approach to these risks. But is there something we can do to look at it a little more holistically? How do we look at cyber across multiple [lines]? Are there any trends we can take from that? What are the products that members are putting together to meet new demands for these cross-class issues?

“You also look at the different products, different ways of distribution that insurers are putting together now – you’ve got parametric cover, you’ve got smart follow, all of those good things – and it feels that we need to look at it a little more holistically and to have people within IUA who can look at how we treat risk across the board.

“It’s more of a chief risk officer interaction, rather than a siloed class of business specific interaction.”

Targeting talent

The third – and perhaps meatiest – of Jones’ priority pillars is centred “on attracting, training and retaining talent” into insurance careers.

Undoubtedly, this is a lofty ambition and one that many market firms have placed on their business agendas – however, Jones hopes to make his mark on mitigating the industry’s talent challenges through the newly created IUA Futures programme, which launched in June 2025.

The scheme, which is being headed up by underwriting and claims executive Ela Metalia, targets IUA members’ staff that have “got zero to two or zero to five years’ experience”, exploring how this demographic specifically seeks to “interact with their peers and what opportunities they have for technical evolution”.

Jones emphasises that the IUA already undertakes a number of ad hoc talent focused initiatives.

This includes networking and technical skills-based events, operating next generation committees as almost a shadow committee to senior groups, hosting soft skills sessions on subjects such as jargon busting, for example, providing ‘show and tell’ type learning opportunities between senior and junior practitioners, as well as collaborating with groups such as the Lloyd’s Marine and Energy Under 35s Insurance Group – a committee of 15 young professionals operating in this class – and online platform Forage, which develops virtual job simulations.

To date, these undertakings have operated in a disparate, unscheduled way, Jones acknowledges. He hopes, therefore, that the IUA Futures scheme will create a more coherent and coordinated programme, to really boost the impact of the trade association’s talent-centric activity.

With this in mind, Metalia is spending the next few months plotting out the scope of her new role – Jones wants IUA Futures to be fully implemented by the end of 2025, ready to make a market splash come 2026.

“We’re seeing [a] real need to attract more people into the market,” Jones says.

“Unless you have got a family member working insurance, you fall into it. I fell into it. Our experience is once you’re into it, you see the variety of the work, the impact that it has societally and then also – being a people industry – that it’s a good environment to be in.

“We need to do more on targeting people to get in the industry in the first place. We’re not trying to necessarily reinvent the wheel or anything like that. This is something everyone should be engaged in in the market.”

Broadening the IUA ecosystem

Although these three pillars form Jones’ “grand plan coming into the role”, he has a few other considerations bubbling away on the back burner too.

For example, the IUA continues to work with brokers on policy clauses and provisions – Jones says the trade association has “half a dozen brokers on our clauses committee”.

He continues: “We don’t mandate anything. These are just clauses that are made available. But [these are usually around] a specific issue, like a sanctions cause, or whether it’s a wording in its entirety.

“But the point to make here is that having brokers in the room with us at the drafting stages is most definitely an advantage to then having a discussion after something has been published.

“And talking to the brokers, they value the interaction, the ability to get involved. We might not always agree on everything, but I think having that transparency of the relationships, that we understand each other’s position has definitely held us in good stead with some of the clauses that we have published.

“That’s definitely something we’re going to continue to do. Making sure you have policy provisions that are clear and understood by participants is absolutely essential.”

Secondly, Jones wants to better embrace the smaller entities and MGAs that are increasingly joining the IUA’s fold.

He explains that currently, IUA membership spans around 95% of gross written premium coming from the London-based company market. However, “we’re getting more and more interest from small entities, MGAs quite often”, Jones adds.

He continues: “We’re talking with prospective members a lot in that MGA space and smaller, more niche providers. They have differing expectations and needs of a trade association.

“One of the things that we’re looking at as an executive committee is how we tailor our offering for those smaller entities or those [that have] got slightly different expectations and needs.”

A ‘small change of emphasis’

The final “small change of emphasis” that Jones is keen to action is “to just be a bit more visible about what we do” – especially when it comes to the IUA’s thought leadership projects and research collaborations.

He explains: “Being a bit more visible about how we promote ourselves and offer our services is key.

“Sometimes, some of the things that we’ve done have gone under the radar, frankly. If we can be more visible in the results of [our] agenda, then the better.

“That would be the key thing, to be bit more on the front foot on promoting what we’re doing.”