Who We Are
We were founded in September 2020, backed by capital provided by GPC Partners Investments (SPV III) LP (“GPC Fund”), a private equity fund managed by Gallatin Point Capital LLC (“Gallatin Point”), and our strategic partner, AmFam, to take advantage of favorable pricing environments, and to address a growing and unmet demand from brokers and policyholders for specialized insurance solutions and quality service in complex lines of business. Our principal objective is to create and sustain superior returns for our stockholders by generating consistent, underwriting profits across our product offerings and through all market cycles, while prudently managing capital.
We offer commercial specialty property and casualty (“P&C”) insurance products to policyholders that vary in size, industry and complexity, focusing on casualty, professional liability, and healthcare liability risks. We provide “craft” underwriting solutions, which require deep underwriting and claims expertise in order to produce attractive financial results. In May 2024, we supplemented our “craft” solution with our “flow” underwriting operation, which is a streamlined, tech-enabled low touch form of underwriting, focused on small, niche and hard-to-place risks. Our policies are primarily written on a non-admitted, or excess and surplus lines (“E&S”) basis, which is free of rate and policy form restrictions, and provides the flexibility to rapidly adjust to emerging market opportunities. We distribute our products through carefully selected relationships with leading distribution partners in both the wholesale and retail markets.
The policies we write are issued on AmFam paper under their own name through our wholly-owned managing general agency subsidiary, Bowhead Specialty Underwriters, Inc. (“BSUI”), in exchange for a ceding fee (“Ceding Fee”), and reinsured 100% to Bowhead Insurance Company, Inc. (“BICI”), our wholly-owned insurance company subsidiary. This mutually beneficial partnership with AmFam has enabled us to grow quickly, but prudently, to take advantage of favorable market conditions, and allows us to deploy capital efficiently.
We are a nimble, remote-friendly organization that is able to attract best-in-class talent nationwide, who are committed to operational excellence and superior service. We are led by a highly experienced and respected underwriting team with a disciplined approach to underwriting and decades of individual, successful underwriting experience. We are supported by a collaborative culture that spans all functions of our business, which allows us to provide a consistent, positive experience for all our partners. We believe that our current market opportunity, differentiated expertise, relationships, culture and leadership team position us well to continue to grow our business profitably.
Our Business
Our Products
We currently offer underwriting solutions to a wide variety of businesses across four underwriting divisions: Casualty, Professional Liability, Healthcare Liability, and Baleen Specialty.
Our Casualty division provides tailored solutions on a primary and excess basis through a wholesale-only distribution channel and consists of a team of experienced underwriters with nationwide capabilities who excel at handling complex risks. We specialize in general liability coverage, which protects a company against liability arising from bodily injury, personal injury or property damage, for risks in the construction, distribution, heavy manufacturing, real estate, public entity and hospitality segments and also consider underwriting risks in a broader range of industries. In the fourth quarter of 2024, we offered a new environmental liability product, providing excess contractors pollution and professional liability coverage through specialized wholesale and retail distribution partners.
Our Professional Liability division provides underwriting solutions on both an admitted and E&S basis for standard and nonstandard risks, and writes a broad variety of entities, including publicly traded and privately held financial institutions as well as not-for-profit organizations. We distribute this business through wholesale and retail channels. We offer management liability products, including Directors and Officers liability, Errors and Omissions liability, Employment Practices liability, Fiduciary liability, Fidelity liability and Miscellaneous Professional liability, Crime insurance, and Cyber. We provide primary coverage and excess coverage for most of our Professional Liability products.
Bowhead’s Healthcare Liability division focuses solely on healthcare entities to provide tailored solutions. We offer Professional and General Liability coverage, as well as Management Liability coverage, across four major healthcare segments—hospitals, miscellaneous medical facilities, senior care providers, and managed care organizations—through select wholesale and retail channels.
Baleen Specialty is a technology-powered underwriting operation that specializes in small to mid-sized risks that are not eligible in the admitted market. We have a wholesale-only distribution model and offer exclusively non-admitted products. Currently, we offer general liability products for two segments – Construction and Real Estate, and our coverage offering is restrictive, as customers are typically distressed or hard-to-place. Typically, small to mid-sized E&S risks are placed through binding authorities managed by wholesale brokers. Using technology, Baleen Specialty can quickly intake, evaluate, and respond, with either declinations or a quote, in a reliable manner. Baleen Specialty’s appetite will continue to expand to meet the evolving needs of our wholesale broker partners.
The table below provides our gross written premiums by underwriting division for the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023, and 2022:
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| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2024 | | % of Total | | 2023 | | % of Total | | 2022 | | % of Total |
| ($ in thousands, except percentages) |
| Casualty | $ | 431,817 | | | 62.1 | % | | $ | 277,455 | | | 54.7 | % | | $ | 192,592 | | | 54.0 | % |
| Professional Liability | 160,651 | | | 23.1 | % | | 145,251 | | | 28.6 | % | | 105,367 | | | 29.5 | % |
| Healthcare Liability | 101,619 | | | 14.6 | % | | 84,982 | | | 16.7 | % | | 58,989 | | | 16.5 | % |
| Baleen Specialty | 1,630 | | | 0.2 | % | | — | | | — | % | | — | | | — | % |
| Gross written premiums | $ | 695,717 | | | 100.0 | % | | $ | 507,688 | | | 100.0 | % | | $ | 356,948 | | | 100.0 | % |
Through our strategic partnership with AmFam, we are able to write business on an admitted basis in all 50 states and Washington D.C. and on a non-admitted basis, in all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and selected risks in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands where such risks are being handled by a U.S. broker.
The table below provides our gross written premiums in the top five states we do business for the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023, and 2022:
Gross written premiums
Competition
The commercial specialty P&C insurance industry is highly competitive. We compete with domestic and international insurers, MGAs and program administrators, some of which have greater financial, marketing and management resources and experience than we do. We may also compete with new market entrants in the future. Competition is based on many factors, including the perceived market strength of the insurer, pricing and other terms and conditions, services provided, the speed of claims payment, the experience and reputation of members of the underwriting and claims teams and ratings assigned by independent rating organizations, such as A.M. Best. Our competition is broad and certain competitors may be specific to only one or two of our underwriting divisions. Some of our notable competitors include American International Group, Inc., Arch Capital Group Ltd., AXA S.A., AXIS Capital Holdings Ltd., Berkshire Hathaway Corporation, C.V. Starr & Co., Inc., Chubb Ltd., Cincinnati Financial Corporation, CNA Financial Corporation, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, The Doctors Company, The Travelers Companies, Inc. and W.R. Berkley Corporation. In determining this list of competitors, we considered factors such as the number of policies and/or the amount of premiums written by such companies and such companies’ reputations within the space.
Our Competitive Strengths
We believe that our competitive strengths include:
Focus on targeted, commercial specialty P&C insurance market segments with profitable growth opportunities. We primarily operate in the $83.3 billion U.S. commercial E&S market (for the year ended December 31, 2023) that has grown 20.9% annually since 2019. We entered into specific segments of this market where we believe we can achieve profitable growth based on our significant underwriting expertise or by acquiring talent with proven track records of generating underwriting profits. Certain of our target markets have experienced meaningful dislocations, allowing favorable market conditions to continue. We believe that we have positioned ourselves as a leader within our sectors and that our specialized, innovative and customized underwriting approach, combined with our strong broker relationships will provide us with an enduring competitive advantage.
Disciplined approach to underwriting led by highly experienced teams with specialized expertise. Our underwriting team is led by industry veterans, who have each served as senior insurance executives, with decades of relevant industry experience. They bring specialized industry knowledge, strong distribution relationships and long track records of underwriting profitability in the lines of business we specialize. We underwrite each risk individually, within prudently managed risk limits, to meet the unique demands of our policyholders. We focus on delivering accurate pricing, speed of execution and consistency to our clients across market cycles.
Fully integrated and accountable underwriting value chain. We maintain strict control across our underwriting value chain, which is managed in-house and fully integrated across origination, structuring, data and analytics, actuarial, claims and legal. These functional teams are not siloed; they collaborate closely with our underwriters to deliver flexible solutions to our customers quickly and profitably. Our organization is singularly focused on underwriting profitability.
Deep, long-term distribution relationships based on expertise, service and mutual benefit. Our management team and underwriters have built meaningful long-term relationships with the leading distributors in their respective lines of business. We are selective in choosing our distribution partners and look for those that have technical expertise in our chosen lines and a shared commitment to excellent service. Further, we seek out relationships where we have the ability to write a significant portion of a distribution partner’s business. We provide our brokers timely responses and feedback to submissions, and mobilize resources across the organization to ensure the appropriate deal gets done. As a result, we consistently receive high-quality business from our broker network. We believe our existing broker relationships and our approach to maintaining these relationships are key components to our long-term growth and success.
Highly collaborative and execution-oriented culture that spans across all functions working toward a common goal of underwriting profitability. Across our company, we collaborate at all levels and operational functions. We frequently hold roundtable discussions where key members of our team provide insights and perspectives, which allow us to assess emerging opportunities quickly and holistically, all while establishing a common culture of excellence. We leverage technology and our flat organizational structure to mobilize our resources across the organization to promptly execute on opportunities.
Nimble and efficient platform with hybrid operating model and modern technology. We built our operating platform on a remote-first basis using leading-edge technology. We believe our hybrid operating model provides us with a significant competitive advantage, allowing us to attract and retain the best industry talent from across the country and to deploy them locally to meet our clients’ unique needs. Our cloud-based modern technology systems allow us to run day-to-day operations efficiently and integrate new tools seamlessly. We developed our pricing and analytics tools purposefully in-house and we strategically leverage third-party technology partnerships where we deem them to be more efficient. We are unburdened by the typical legacy system issues that impact many of our competitors.
Strong balance sheet and no reserves from accident years prior to 2020. We believe our strong balance sheet is a key advantage that enables us to grow our business while delivering strong financial performance. We entered the market towards the end of 2020 when insurance rates were starting to increase following multiple years of rate inadequacy. Since then, we have continued to experience a favorable pricing environment, while many of our competitors are confronting the potential for adverse development.
Experienced and entrepreneurial leadership team. We have assembled what we believe is a best-in-class team of leaders from across the P&C industry. Our team is comprised of highly experienced executives who have previously held leadership roles across underwriting, claims, actuarial, technology, legal and operations at leading insurance companies. We are led by our founder and Chief Executive Officer, Stephen Sills, who has over four decades of experience leading businesses in the commercial specialty P&C insurance industry. Our underwriting team is led by David Newman, our Chief Underwriting Officer, who, along with our underwriting division leads, have extensive experience in the P&C industry. In addition, our board of directors includes accomplished industry practitioners who bring decades of invaluable experience from prior roles at insurance and financial services companies.