AFRO-ASIAN REINSURANCE
B2B Brand Positioning Through Competitive Intelligence
(Context)
The brief came out of a conversation between my manager and the head of underwriting: when brokers were shopping a risk around, nobody internally could say with confidence how Afro-Asian was perceived versus the reinsurers it kept losing deals to. Over the prior 12 months the underwriting team had tracked losing roughly 40% of competitive tenders to the same handful of names, without ever documenting why. In reinsurance the buyer is a broker placing risk on behalf of an insurer, so perception in that broker channel is effectively the whole brand: there is no consumer advertising to fall back on, only how confidently your name answers the question "why them?"
(Challenge)
The first week was mostly realizing how hard this information actually is to get. I spent almost two days trying to pull pricing signals from one competitor's public filings before accepting the numbers were too aggregated across 15+ business lines to isolate anything reinsurance-specific, and pivoted to broker commentary instead.
(Approach)
From a review of 23 recent tender records I picked the five reinsurers that came up repeatedly as the names Afro-Asian was actually competing against across the Africa, Asia, and Europe corridor. I built a comparison across four dimensions: risk appetite positioning, pricing signals, business line emphasis, and target client size and type.
(Execution)
Everything went into a single spreadsheet matrix, pulling from roughly 30 source documents across filings, rating agency commentary, and broker updates gathered over about three weeks. Each competitor was scored on the same four dimensions so the comparison stayed honest: risk appetite positioning, pricing signals, business line emphasis, and target client size and type. Three of the five competitors were using near-identical positioning language around being "financially strong, responsive partners," which meant the words brokers heard from most of the market were interchangeable. Cross-referencing against the 23 tenders showed none of the five had specific messaging for mid-sized regional insurers in the Africa corridor, a segment accounting for roughly 35% of the tenders reviewed.
(Sales meets marketing)
The findings were packaged as a 12-slide summary and handed to the people who actually sell: the underwriting team. Positioning and pricing recommendations were written in the language of a broker pitch rather than a brand deck, so the same analysis that mapped the market also armed the next tender response. I was later told the work was referenced in at least one broker-facing pitch, which is the real test of competitive intelligence: not whether it reads well, but whether it changes what the commercial team says in the room.
(How it ran, end to end)
- 0123 tender recordsreviewed to identify who Afro-Asian actually loses to
- 02Source sweep~30 documents: filings, rating agencies, broker commentary
- 03Comparison matrix5 competitors scored on 4 positioning dimensions
- 0412-slide summaryfindings packaged for leadership and underwriting
- 05Broker-facing pitchrecommendations reused by the commercial team
(By the numbers)
(Results)
- Benchmarked Afro-Asian against 5 direct competitors across 4 positioning dimensions
- Reviewed 23 recent tender records and roughly 30 source documents to ground the analysis in real competitive activity, not just brand messaging
- Flagged that 3 of 5 competitors (60%) were using near-identical positioning language
- Identified a segment representing ~35% of reviewed tenders where no competitor had specific positioning
- Findings presented in a 12-slide summary, shared onward to the underwriting team and referenced in a subsequent broker-facing pitch
(What I learned)
The actual skill wasn't the analysis. It was figuring out where to find reliable information in an industry that doesn't publish it willingly, and being upfront that maybe 70% of the findings were solidly sourced while the remainder were educated inference, so leadership knew exactly which parts to lean on.