Faces of DUAL: Meet Paul Smith, Group Head of Transactional Risk

My name is Paul Smith, and I’m the Group Head of Transactional Risk here at DUAL. I joined the business in January this year, and my role is to be the figurehead for the five products we have within the Transactional Risk stable. These are W&I, or Reps and Warranties as it is known in North America, Contingent Tax, Contingent Legal and Title Insurance, and our Environmental product suite. 

Having joined the business in January this year, we’ve been working very hard to get our global binder in place. That means capacity across all 11 jurisdictions in which we operate, led by Liberty, providing a consistent and stable capacity deck for us to sell our products in all of our locations. Aside from that, we’ve been working hard to establish an operating model that works for our brokers, our employees within the team and, most importantly, our capacity providers. 

What is the ambition for the Transactional Risk team in the next five years?  

Over the next five years, what do we need to achieve? We need to build a great machine. What does that look like? It means adding people to the exceptional team we already have across all five product areas. From there, we need to establish strong relationships with our brokers, and then we need to achieve scale. Scale means offering all of our products in all of our jurisdictions across all of our regions, and building our business to somewhere in the region of 500 million GWP. 

What makes DUAL stand out in the market?  

What makes DUAL stand out in the market is its scale, its experience, its 20 years in underwriting and the entrepreneurialism it gets from the Group as a whole. It’s the platform that allows this business to grow and thrive. 

Why does the Transactional Risk team stand out in the market? 

The Transactional Risk team stands out because of the expertise of the people we have brought into the team. They are real subject matter experts in the products they offer. We’re also able to offer five transactional risk products, which is unique in the market, and we do that on a global scale. That’s something that has not really been done before. We’re also backing all of that up with exceptional claims handling expertise, which is really important to our offering. It is often not done very well by the rest of the market, and it is going to be critical to what we are trying to achieve for our clients. 

How would you describe DUAL in three words?  

I think DUAL is entrepreneurial, collaborative and it’s certainly a little bit mad.  

Do you have any hobbies or achievements outside of work?  

Away from the office, I live down in Bath in the West Country with my wife and two children. When I’m not working, you might find me out on my road bike in the hills around Somerset, or on holiday in the Alps, skiing or mountain biking down some mountains.