Lucida Group’s Mike Joseph says it is a ‘surreal’ feeling to retire, but that it has ’been on my mind that you never know what’s around the corner’
After spending nearly 40 years in the insurance industry, Lucida Group’s Mike Joseph says it is a “surreal” feeling to retire, but felt the passing of a family member and a personal incident that saw him “an hour away from not making it” made him consider his future.
Joseph announced earlier this week (9 February 2026) that he would retire after a long stint in insurance that began at just the age of 16 with LV.
He went on to hold senior roles at 1st Quote Insurance and Allen and Allen Group, before forming Right Choice Insurance Brokers (RCIB) in 2008.
In 2018, RCIB achieved over £100m in gross written premium (GWP), which facilitated the sale of a stake in the business to LDC, forming the Lucida Group with Joseph as chief executive.
However, in February 2025, he brought in Matthew Gledhill as chief executive, with Joseph focusing on the chief underwriting officer (CUO) position. It was at this point that he expressed his thoughts about exiting the business.
Joseph tells Insurance Times: “I was the CUO and group chief executive as the founder and I couldn’t do both.
“So, I tried to recruit someone as a CUO a couple of years ago and I couldn’t find a person that I was happy to hand it over to.
“Underwriting has always been my baby really, so I ended up doing a u-turn and bringing in Gledhill as group chief executive to let me concentrate on being the CUO.
“At that point, I didn’t really have a fixed retirement date in mind, but I said to the investors in LDC that I want to think about exiting the business.”
Personal incidents
Joseph will retire at the end of March 2026.
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As a result, he will depart daily operations, but remain the largest shareholder in Lucida Group.
Joseph says: “For me it feels a bit surreal [deciding to retire]. I mean leaving any job after 18 years is quite a big step for anybody. Leaving your own business is even bigger.
“Retiring, of course, it is also another big thing. I’ll retire from my day job, [but] I’ll still be an investor in the group and I have got quite a big investment portfolio and I can add value and a bit of mentoring with some of the other businesses I work with.”
Joseph’s thoughts on his future came following the RCIB sale in 2018, with him saying that from “that moment on it was about building value and then finding a successor for me”.
And two personal incidents following this made him really consider retirement, saying that “you do a lot of thinking about your life”.
“Around the time we sold the business, we lost my mother in law to asbestos cancer,” he says.
“So, that put a bit of pressure on things at home, with my wife saying ‘how long do you want to work for, life’s too short’.
“Then, I had my own experience in 2019 – I ended up in intensive care for a month.
“I had a misdiagnosis, burst appendix and I was touch and go for a bit – they said I was like an hour away from not making it.
“So, of course, when I was in hospital for that month, you do a lot of thinking about your life and I thought ‘I don’t want to be someone who goes on too long in terms of working’.
“So, that was always on my mind a bit.”
He adds that it has “always been on my mind that you never know what’s around the corner and you should try and enjoy life, but it’s getting that balance right”.
“For me, I was financially secure a long, long time ago, so it wasn’t about waiting until I’m in the right financial position, but I needed to be in the right place to feel that I’m handing over the business to a safe pair of hands,” he says.
Succession planning
Gledhill was the first appointment made in preparation for this and, exactly one year later, Lucida Group announced that Nicola George would succeed Joseph.
In addition to her group responsibilities, George will focus on executing the underwriting strategy of RCIB.
She joins from Allianz, where she was managing director of Allianz Personal Broker, having previously held the role of pricing director at LV Broker and before that head of pricing and underwriting at Aviva for the broker and partnerships channels.
Joseph says that after “handing over the reins of underwriting with George coming along, the timing [to retire] just felt right”.
“She gets this business, which is important,” Joseph says.
“She really understands this business and our specialisms in non-standard and risk validation.
“We do a lot of things different to many other brokers and insurers. We invest a lot of money in making sure that the insurance company have got the right client at the right price and the client’s got the right product at the right price.
“George bought into that when she was a senior person at Aviva, so it meant I didn’t have to worry about her coming here and undoing all the good work that we’ve done.”
Joseph adds that he is “always going to be a lifetime ambassador of the business”.
“If the business ever needs me for anything, I’ll always be here, I’ll always be a backup,” Joseph says.
”So, if Gledhill or anybody else senior, if you ever need to take time out of the business, I’ll always be happy to step in and help.”
His career began in 2019, when he joined a local north London newspaper after graduating from the University of Sheffield with a first-class honours degree in journalism.
He took up the position of deputy news editor at Insurance Times in March 2023, before being promoted to his current role in May 2024.View full Profile
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