OAK Global: One year on

In the months preceding this milestone, we engaged in multiple workstreams resulting in the successful launch of our business. We worked through the Lloyd’s new entrants’ process with Polo Managing Agency and raised equity and underwriting capital from various partners including Bain Capital and Names, accessed through Members’ Agents Hampden, Alpha and Argenta. We are grateful for the support from these partners and multiple advisors that assisted us through this process.

Throughout the journey to launch, articulating our vision of building a leading global risk partner and our value proposition to clients, brokers and key stakeholders was, and remains, paramount.

Throughout the past 12 months, the founding team has continued to build from a handful of individuals to over 50 talented, passionate and respected colleagues.  Our team’s energy, enthusiasm and expertise has been fundamental to our success in 2025.  

A key measure of this success is the breadth of client engagement we were able to achieve since the launch of the business. The OAK Reinsurance portfolio comprises insurers from all our target geographies globally, totalling over 400 clients across more than 650 programmes and nearly 2,000 individual contracts. We are incredibly grateful to our clients, brokers and the wider insurance community for the welcome we have received. We are proud to be a valued partner to so many fantastic companies.

Partnership is the driving force of our engagement with clients, brokers and all key stakeholders. We work to build mutually beneficial long-term relationships, leveraging our risk expertise to provide insight and support the development of innovative, profitable opportunities. Focusing on our core areas of risk expertise; Climate, Technology, Geopolitical and Economic, allows us to provide solutions to clients across multiple property and specialty classes of business.

A core part of our purpose to underwrite a resilient future is our climate innovation underwriting strategy, developed this year and supported by a dedicated multi-disciplinary team with backgrounds in underwriting, engineering, climate science, public policy and more. Our evolving climate is giving rise to new and emerging risks, from consumer and business resilience to new technologies. By embracing these challenges, we seek to unlock new opportunities for the market – enabling profitable growth, while supporting societal economic resilience.

Our level of service, to clients and brokers, demonstrates our commitment to excellence in everything we do. This included paying claims in our first weeks of operation in response to the California wildfires, something we were proud to do and a timely reminder of the relevance of our industry in times of societal need.

Relevance comes from not only our response to events, but in understanding the changing nature of the risk landscape we face, now and in the future. Our risk expertise is rooted in scientific, data-driven insight delivered through best-in-class technology.  Our proprietary technology platform, OCEAN, has been a key area of focus for us this year and we have collaborated with fantastic partners, including Moody’s RMS, Amazon Web Services, fourTheorem, Allphins, Bondaval, Reask and others to deliver a best-in-class capital, exposure and analytics network.

Lloyd’s and the wider London market has been a key part of our achievements to date, and we are proud to have contributed to the growth of the London market order in our first year of operation. Aligned with Lloyd’s identity as the world’s leading insurance and reinsurance marketplace, our team are committed to supporting the growth of our clients’ businesses through the development of accretive, profitable opportunities.  

Looking forward, we remain driven, ambitious and innovative, as evidenced by the launch of OAK Enterprise and its dedicated Lloyd’s Syndicate 1440, as the second strategic business unit under our newly created group identity of OAK Global. OAK Enterprise will focus on underwriting retrocessional property and specialty reinsurance sitting alongside primary reinsurance focused OAK Reinsurance under the OAK Global group umbrella. 

As we grow, we remain committed to developing the next generation of underwriting and operational talent and to creating an environment where individuals feel valued, supported and able to contribute to OAK Global’s long-term vision. We will continue to invest in talent, data and technology, while ensuring that we maintain the culture that has defined our first year.

Our first 12 months have been an incredible journey and to everyone who has supported OAK Global – thank you. We look forward to the year ahead and building on the valued relationships we have established during our first year of operation.

Cathal Carr, Founder and CEO of OAK Global