Mustard Consulting

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Thinking

Insurance is full of accepted wisdom, much of which exists for good reason.

However, some of it persists simply because people haven't thought critically about whether there might be a better approach. This is where we delve into our passion for exploring business insights: new business models, innovative distribution methods, Lloyd’s, growth strategies, market structure, and the insurance innovation opportunities that arise when we look at familiar problems from a fresh perspective.

Not every idea will resonate, but those that introduce creative strategies are often worth examining.

A different perspective

Mustard was founded on the belief that creativity plays a crucial role in driving insurance innovation.

We still believe that.

For us, creativity means questioning assumptions, making connections that aren't immediately obvious, and being willing to explore answers that don’t already exist. This approach can lead to valuable business insights.

Sometimes that leads to a new product.

Sometimes a new route to market.

Sometimes a completely different way of looking at the problem.

That is the kind of creative strategies you'll find here.

My AI prediction… and I bet it’s not what you think.

I am reminded of an advert for Barclays Bank from the mid-80s. It’s set in a dystopian, Blade Runner-inspired city and features a woman trying to arrange an overdraft, but she is constantly frustrated by one proto-AI interface after another, telling her there’s insufficient input or that it is not programmed “to accept explanation”.

Her frustration eventually boils over, and she exclaims, “Why can’t I just talk to somebody!”, whereupon a kindly and softly lit Barclays Bank employee offers help and somewhere to sit.

It’s here if you’re interested: https://lnkd.in/eAxQd3RN

It was produced when banks and most other large institutions were introducing automated call handling systems of the “press 1 for sales, press 2 for service” variety.

Despite being over 40 years old, the advert is strangely prescient.

We’re all excited about the potential of AI and looking at every aspect of our businesses to find ways in which it can increase efficiency and accuracy and reduce cost, usually by reducing the amount of human intervention required.

Much of that makes perfect sense, but I do wonder whether, like the woman in the advert, there will come a point when we have automated so much that people themselves become a virtue of an operation, and one with considerable value.

Companies recruiting staff might advertise vacancies by saying every application is reviewed by a real person. Insurers might proudly state that submissions are considered by underwriters who understand a client’s concerns, objectives and the risks that actually affect the business. Claims propositions might distinguish themselves by promising that, when something has gone badly wrong, you can speak to somebody with the authority, experience and judgement to help.

Perhaps even customer service will rediscover the competitive advantage of simply answering the phone.

None of this means AI goes away. Quite the opposite. I suspect it becomes ubiquitous, quietly doing an enormous amount of work behind the scenes, but once everybody has access to broadly similar technology, the technology itself may cease to be the differentiator.

Perhaps the differentiator becomes what we choose not to automate.

We already attach greater value to things that are handmade, home-cooked, bespoke or personal because somebody has exercised care, judgement or skill in producing them.

Perhaps the more interesting question for businesses, then, is not simply where AI can replace people, but where people themselves might become part of the value proposition.

There may be things in your business that look inefficient, old-fashioned or stubbornly human, but which customers actually value precisely because they involve judgement, empathy, experience or a conversation with somebody who understands the problem.

It might be worth working out what those things are before we automate them away.

Creativity Has its place

We Join the Dots

We talk endlessly about innovation. Strategies are built around it, billions are invested in it, and leaders are measured on their ability to deliver it.

However, here’s the uncomfortable truth: creativity, which sparks innovation, is consistently undervalued in our market. While we reward efficiency, scale, and execution, creating KPIs for productivity and performance, we rarely measure, encourage, or protect the space for people to think differently.

Innovation, especially in sectors like insurance innovation, doesn’t emerge from a dashboard or a one-day seminar at a hotel near Heathrow. It comes from creativity and the willingness to see a problem from a fresh angle, connect the dots that others overlook, and envision a future that doesn’t yet exist. Until organisations begin to value creativity alongside delivering business insights, their innovation agendas will always fall short.

I'm really annoying

Why that's actually a good thing

Whilst this will not come as a surprise to those who know me well, the fact I’m prepared to actually admit it in public probably will. Let me explain.

I’m very good at spotting patterns. I tend to see structure across different situations and can usually tell whether your plan is genuinely different, something I’ve seen before, or simply being described differently. I won’t take your claims of novelty at face value, but equally, I don’t miss genuine shifts when they do appear.

I’m curious in a very specific way. I’m less interested in how something is presented and more interested in how it actually works. How it really makes money, what behaviours your plan encourages, what happens when it’s under pressure, and how competitors are likely to respond. That tends to reveal a slightly different picture.

I also have a tendency to question things that others are quite happy to accept. “Established truths” about how the market works, what clients expect, or how things have to be structured. Some of those are real, but a surprising number are just inherited assumptions that no one has revisited for a while.

My instinct to question them isn’t about being difficult for the sake of it. It’s about working out whether a constraint is real or simply unchallenged, and what might happen if it isn’t there at all. That’s usually where the more interesting options start to appear, even if they are a bit less comfortable.

I’m also okay with ambiguity. Incomplete information, conflicting signals, and no obvious answer don’t particularly bother me, especially at an early stage. In fact, that’s often where the useful thinking happens, provided you don’t rush to collapse it into the first answer that feels right, which is where a lot of weaker ideas come from.

All of which is a slightly long way of saying that being creative, at least in the way I think about it, isn’t really about having ideas. It’s about seeing what’s actually going on and being disciplined enough to test that thinking before anything gets built.

So yes, I’m annoying.

But in my experience, that’s usually a lot better than confidently executing the wrong idea.

Technology is not what we do, it's how we do it!

Efficiency and accuracy are important, but not as important as true change.

And so, whilst the guttering flame that is Blueprint 2 continues to flicker amidst talk of it going out entirely, the future of Lloyd's market optimisation looks a little less clear.

I don’t think anyone is that surprised. Deep down, the market knew that digitising existing processes is not the same thing as reimagining the system. If all you do is take a complex, paper-based structure and wrap it in APIs, you have not modernised it, you have simply embedded it more deeply.

Perhaps Lloyd’s should think of itself less as a transaction processor and more as a platform for specialist risk appetite, capital, licences, and the ability to bring together people who understand risks that do not yet fit anywhere else. Isn’t that the sales pitch after all?

And if that is the case, then surely optimisation should come after strategy, not before it.

Be the Rebel Bee!

Take a different path

Bees have been on this planet for over 100 million years. Modern humans? Just a few hundred thousand.

There’s a lot we can learn from them.

Take the waggle dance, the way a foraging bee tells others where to find food.

But here’s the twist, not every bee follows the dance. Most take direction from it, yet a small minority ignore the signal and explore elsewhere. Those few rebels are vital. They stop the colony from chasing the same patch of flowers until it’s bare.

Many businesses work the same way. The majority keep things efficient, following process and data. But the creatives, the ones who ask “what if?” or take a different path, bring adaptability and resilience.

Without them, a business becomes efficient but blind.

With them, it stays curious, alert, and alive to new ideas.

Every team needs its creative bees.

Have you got yours?

Cartoon fly dressed as a revolutionary figure. Bee

If you're an underwriter, should AI be keeping you awake?

A worried underwriter notices a glowing AI figure outside his window.

Maybe...but like most things, it depends.

Lloyd’s published “Learning from the best: Behaviours that drive top underwriting performance” back in 2020. You can download it here https://lnkd.in/eUKScd45 if you have absolutely nothing else to do with your day.

For everyone else, here is the real message behind the behavioural science:

The profitable underwriter is creative.
The unprofitable underwriter is procedural.

Whilst Lloyd’s wraps this in phrases like “growth mindset”, at Mustard, we like to be more direct.

The best underwriters reframe risks, design new wordings, hunt for opportunities, are clear on their appetite and get close enough to clients and their advisors to understand what their real needs are. They see technology as a lever, not a threat. They create value instead of waiting for someone to bring it to them.

The weakest underwriters do the opposite.

They wait for risks to appear, reject anything awkward, hide behind price, wording, or a vague expression of appetite and blame market conditions when the numbers turn sour.

Underwriters exhibiting these poor behaviours are already being replaced by AI and algorithms. Not in theory anymore, but at least where the follow market is concerned, in practice.

AI has so much to offer our sector, but what it does not have is imagination.

It cannot originate, explore, or cut a new path through legacy behaviours. That territory belongs to human underwriters who bring curiosity and invention to their work.

This is where Mustard is focusing.

Helping underwriters rediscover the part of the job that makes them valuable in the first place. The part machines cannot replicate, and the part that will define the next generation of leaders in the market.

If Lloyd's and the London market wants to stay relevant and see off the spectre of AI, it needs fewer people processing and more people imagining.