“The ability to respond to emerging risks has been part of our corporate DNA since day one,” said Alexander Blair-Johns (pictured), CEO of Signal Underwriting Inc.
Launched in the middle of the pandemic, Signal was built on a sharp reaction to market gaps – specifically, how carriers pulled back on infectious disease coverage in healthcare. That early exposure to emerging risk wasn’t just foundational, it shaped how the firm still operates.
“We’re not looking to be the answer to every question,” said Blair-Johns. “We know that we work within healthcare, life science, professional liability and a couple of other niche things like product… call it non-profits.”
That disciplined scope has guided both product development and growth. “Last year, we identified that we were getting a lot of non-profit submissions. And so we built a product for it,” he said. “This year we rolled out actually some limit of Covid coverage for our healthcare segment.”
Blair-Johns acknowledged that Canadian MGAs are under pressure to respond faster, especially as carriers struggle with delays. But speed, he argued, doesn’t mean cutting corners.
“We try to fill that void for [brokers]... that allows us to make decisions quickly, it allows us to say no quickly, it allows us to respond right away if we need to,” he said.
Signal retains full underwriting authority in-house. That structure was built deliberately, using lessons from Blair-Johns’ earlier roles inside large insurers. “I tried to do everything and set everything up the way I would have wanted it when I was working in other roles,” he said. That included product wordings, training manuals, and applications – locked in before scale took over.
Healthcare and life sciences are attracting more competition, but Blair-Johns warned that domain knowledge, not market timing, determines longevity.
“It’s always interesting to see who’s poking their head in next,” he said. “But when you’re looking for long-term stability, working with underwriters in a shop that has done it for a while is pretty important.”
Emerging risk classes like psychedelic therapy – psilocybin, ketamine-assisted treatments – are already testing traditional underwriting appetite. “There is sometimes a challenge for some people in the market to be able to place these things,” he said. “We’ve been able to help all of our brokers with those risks and place them for them.”
He pointed to more structural problems on the life sciences side, particularly with diagnostic tech. “A tech E&O policy traditionally isn’t going to pick up bodily injury... medical malpractice policies aren’t built to cover the decisions made by an algorithm,” he said.
Signal worked with a London partner to design a custom product that merges malpractice, product liability, cyber and E&O in a single form. “All for one thing, all in one package,” said Blair-Johns.
The firm’s underwriting posture leans heavily on data – collected, structured and mined internally. “From the moment we started, we’ve been collecting a fair bit of data on our insureds,” he said. “We sort of sacrificed ourselves and did a bit more data entry at the beginning to get everything in there.”
That early investment gave underwriters and claims staff real-time visibility into risk performance. “We’ve had a full data pool since day one,” he said. “And we’re able to slice and dice it every which way we need.”
In complex, long-tail business lines, Blair-Johns said that level of insight is non-negotiable. “It’s the ability to shift and address those exposures as they develop,” he said. “And having a clear view on your claims.”
