 Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. So we're doing a special series of podcasts which I'm recording over Google Hangouts. So we're doing audio and video because for some unknown reason people don't want to come see me face to face right now. But there's always opportunity and the cool thing is I'm able to now podcast with people from all over the world. So we're going to get an amazing eclectic mix of people from different industries, different perspectives to share their story and tell us their thoughts and feelings on what's going on right now. And all of that cool stuff. I hope you enjoy it. Please subscribe in all the usual places and enjoy. And we're live. Thank you everyone for watching and joining me. Thank you again also for all of the comments over the last few episodes. It's been really useful. And today it's a real pleasure to welcome back Steven Catlin who is the CEO and Chairman of Convex Insurance. We were speaking a few weeks ago and we did a podcast I think in February. And so a lot has happened since then. So Steven welcome and thank you so much for joining me. Great pleasure. Thank you for asking me. Pleasure. So I guess a good place to start. How's the last six months, seven months been? It's been an extraordinary experience. I ended up being locked down and being muted for 14 weeks largely because I was going to come back when I could. And then my wife got flu. We didn't know what it was. So I had to decide whether to sort of cocoon myself in the flat in London or stay out and be muted. I have a place out there. And my wife and my two girls said, you know what daddy? You're safer out there so stay put. I hadn't quite been out there for 14 weeks and I had to cook for yourself and do my own washing. For 14 weeks was a new experience. But not a bad place to be locked down I guess. No, it had a lovely view. But I actually landed up having two day jobs at the same time for a bit because I think you know I became chairman of this pandemic insurance group looking to the future to set that up from scratch. And alongside that, at the beginning was one of the most enormous capital rates. So I was doing two day jobs and I did it for about that for about eight weeks. And I have to say by the end I was exhausted because my day was starting quite early because of London time and finishing between, you know, maybe eight o'clock in the evening. So I was working all hours, God said, and a good bit of the time on the weekend. And I suddenly realized that I actually hadn't taken time out at all. I knew I sat down on the sofa. I got back out of work about 5.30 which was the first time for a long time. I sat on the sofa and the next thing I knew it was 10.30 to go straight to sleep. And I do think the management of time is hard when you're doing all these video conferences the whole time. And you know, I have to say I didn't manage my affairs that well because I'd land up doing eight hours on the trot nonstop. And that's a long time to concentrate. That's a personal position. I think from a court position we were very fortunate. Moving people to their homes was absolutely streamlined, no glitches. We were geared up for it anyway. So we didn't have any width issues corporately. I think the thing that we found was that some people are very weak Wi-Fi signals and that was pretty difficult sometimes. I also found that actually chairing meetings, I had to change my chairing style. And once you can chair meetings on these media, if it's up to about eight people it's reasonably okay. But once you get beyond eight or so you can't see everybody's body language at the same time. And it's very difficult to get interactive debate because people start talking over each other. It's hard to because you're not often used to you can read people's body language when you're when you're live. It takes a bit of time just to build the rapport on video, especially if there's more than one person on the call. It's hard to work. I found it in chairing meetings that I had to be rather more prescriptive than I normally be and get people to go on mute if they want to speak and then I sort of manage who spoke when and then make certain that during the meeting I go around the table one by one probably every 20 minutes or so just to make sure everybody had input because the trouble with the video situation is he who shouts the loudest can win big time unless he's managed or she's managed properly. I mean and chairing difficult meetings whether it's a problem or chairing strategic meetings is definitely more difficult virtually. No doubt about that. It can be done. I think in terms of the company we've since that time we've grown from when I last spoke to you with February I think we had about 120 people on board then by the end of this year we're going to have 300. Wow. So we've employed virtually somewhere around 160,000, 1,800 people. Amazing. Completely virtually. Yeah. Amazing. And that is an interesting experience the biggest challenge though is we're trying to build the culture in the company and we were doing so it was going really well and suddenly you're bringing these people on virtually how do you get people into a culture on a virtual basis? That is a challenge. It's super tough. Because a lot of time we've been managing these virtual processes but when you go in face to face you walk into the office someone asks you if they can take your jacket they make you a coffee you get that really nice kind of feeling but online you don't have any of that. I think it's like any other video conference call historically if you've already created a bond of relationship with somebody you can keep it going by video conference actually creating a relationship over the video is much much more difficult to do and then you've got to do that one-on-one even then it's not quite the same it can be done I've proven that but it's not the same and what we've done is had team meetings and chat meetings with smaller groups within the organization to try and make certain we remain inclusive as an organization but we've had to work real hard at that and I've got to say our head of HR and our head of marketing between them I've done a really brilliant job in terms of getting people involved I mean to extent of them doing each individual underwriting unit doing their own video presentation which can last five to ten minutes some are very serious and a bit heavy some are just hysterical it's just to the whole company this is to go to everyone and this is what we're up to yeah and I mean they became quite competitive because you know I'm gonna be better than the last one and the quality of these things went up exponentially over we did week at the moment and I don't watch them the minute they come out but I've watched them in batches and it's just fascinating to hear and it does make it real and I think that's the thing about Pringwood how do you make it real? Yes also the other the other thing I found is because not everyone is living in a in a good place let's say like so I mean if you're working from your bedroom if you're if you're sharing your flat and so whether you're interviewing for a new job you know like I don't know let's say someone was interviewing with you as a final interview but they don't have anywhere to do the video from maybe it's just the bed or so you get you know a lot of people have gone through that that kind of scenario where it's when you step in live and you've got your suit on it's a bit more you know you don't know where these people live that they're just feeling you know it's a tough tough scenario to do. We found that generically sub 35 is where the real struggle is because either people are living sharing a flat or maybe it's a couple with two kids under 10 you know two-bit and flat no balcony you know that you know beam me out of here scotty type thing and I the way I interpret the government's guidance on terms of you can come into work if you need to and I think there for us are two needs one is you just physically need to be there either for a meeting or simply to get some data and you can print it out properly in the office when you can't do it at home I mean I'm very lucky I can do it wherever I am but there's another issue which you all to do with mental health and potential depression and I take a view that need to go into work could include things like that because you see somebody who is for whatever reason really struggling if you can spot it early enough and get them into the office then you can help it doesn't get rid of it but it helps to fuse it yes but the challenge is because it's virtual not it's it's much harder to notice if one of your your colleagues or team members is struggling and also given the current state of the economy a lot of people I speak to are quite nervous about saying there to their boss hey I'm struggling or you know I need some time off you know they don't want to be the next one to get made redundant or you know so it's a very it's a very tough spot that people find themselves I think and as as you know as leaders it's it's it's I guess creating that right environment where people feel comfortable to come to come forward yeah we've been training up about 15 people within the organization to be aware of mental challenges um so they're part of their day job is they they allocated teams of people and their job is to watch very carefully but you can often see through behavioral patterns when somebody is struggling and you don't have to say anything but say and then we know when we allow people back into the office they have to ask ahead of time um and we don't ask them to say I've got a mental health problem you just say actually my home circumstances are such I can't work there very easily so we make it easy for them to come in without having to go through the whole nine yards but people are careful about what they say but I think if you get your eyes and your ears open do you spot it as well as you do face to face no but can you still spot it if you work at it I would submit you can actually the other thing I noticed it was when they when they shut down eased off and we we gradually let people come into the office we started with 10 to 15 before they did the the last one um restriction we got to about 86 and it was amazing going to the office it was absolutely electric you could feel and people were so pleased to talk to um socialize there was a complete bus and then the deflation of one of the three Wednesdays ago and they said no game over I think that day I think it's probably the most morale in our company since we started because everybody's gotten this upwards trajectory and I said oh here we go again yeah it was the same for us everyone was so keen to come back and we started coming back you know maybe June July and then they just people wanted to come in it's nice to you know to see people it's nice to have a change of scenery and all those things and then the streets of London Fenchurch Street Leadenhall Street started to feel a little bit busier um you know I went out for a few lunches which I hadn't done in ages and now I'm in my office today um actually probably looking at your building and and the street down below Fenchurch Street I can't see anyone I mean there's like no one well look Leadenhall Market I have never known anything like it I mean in all the years I've been working I'm a city I'm not going to tell you how many people are being embarrassed you know I've never known that place I've never been bothered but you know Leadenhall Market I reckon is about 15 percent of the outlets are open I mean yeah I mean some of those people must be either going out of business or out of business um and this second lockdown the economic consequences for the country are just dire oh yeah yeah are you a fan of the second lockdown you think it's like necessary to to do am I am I fan um trying to avoid being political I think Boris has always been a bit slow in doing what he's going to do you know but the first time around he was a week late and the cystic show that there's a cost to that even in the content reacted quicker than we did and I remember saying to my my partner I said look I reckon would they gonna have to do a shutdown because it's politically unacceptable so to do within the European community and particularly with Brexit going on being a standalone or something like that didn't strike me as being especially clever so I think it was inevitable yeah I think that I personally think they're going to have to open things up for Christmas and New Year I think it's a terrible mistake to say you can only have six people in the family in one place if there's ever a Christmas and New Year when family should be together it's this one and I think whatever they do they should definitely relax those rules I think if they don't they're going to get ignored anyway so why don't they make it legitimate and just say right we're going to open up for you know 10 days maybe two weeks and then we may have to shut down again afterwards but give people give families family units the ability to be together through three generations I agree I do agree I I I may be not as optimistic as you I think you know what's the language we will review on the 2nd of December it feels like and also again you know kind of bringing politics into it there's also a lot of political pressure you know for for the government to reduce the r number and and things like that so it feels like it's now time to buy Amazon shares if you didn't buy them already because you know we're not going to oxa street or the local high street to buy a Christmas presents so I think it's you know it's another shot in the arm for the Amazon application of the world but I mean you know we talked a bit about the streets being being empty I mean I mean for me it's this very difficult balance isn't it between you know the economy you know mental health and and well-being and and you know managing the cases of of the virus so it's a tricky spot you wouldn't want to be in government right now I mean they're jammed if they do and they're down if they don't and it's so criticized um but they are living for the day I mean out the Alpan Demic future prospects we've had to put on whole time being simply because it's impossible to get the government to think prospectively on anything and I've been dealing with government through treasury and treasury have actually said to me look you know we we don't know what they're thinking we can't do it and you know what they don't know what they're thinking they're just so consumed with the here and now and I can understand that but at the same time we can't live like that forever we have to have a way forward um we have to think about the economic consequences and we have to think about the cost of lives outside of covid-19 as well the death rate is increasing outside of covid-19 yeah it's well known fact that people are not working their their health both physical and mental is generally speaking worse than the people are working and people are getting in to get proper checkouts for cancer and all that good stuff you know and it's been delayed by well it was six months it's probably now gonna be another could be another six months and and there are there are consequences outside of covid-19 on the health side which aren't spoken about and they probably should be spoken about now because we've got to have a balance of the perspective on this and like any other economy certainly in the western world i mean the states are suffering the whole of europe suffering we're suffering one of the things i had to do is look at SME for me medium enterprise businesses when considering pandemic prospectively and i have to say i hadn't quite realized what percentage of the working population is employed by SME and it's big yeah um is over 50 percent in the UK no but it's on the way it's different to know exactly it's between 30 and 50 right right and that includes one man band by the way um but i mean that's that's a part of the economy that is probably hurting the most and anybody to do with retail is really and then the pubs and the restaurants and the hotels any form of entertainment well most of them go up a little bit of sport he's really hurting i mean it's tough i spoke to a good friend of mine um you know he's mid 40s his whole career has been organizing live events yeah and you know he was like what do i do now you know he's not kind of a techie guy where he could switch to doing the live events because it's kind of more techie people running them and and and so it's just i think for it just seems for a lot of people are just relentless you know when you're if you're an industry that's you know that's that's been shut down it's tough if you're running your own business and a lot of my friends run their own small businesses again it's it's almost been like the pace has been a relentless you know it was like kind of buzzwords were like hustle hustle hustle pivot pivot pivot and you know those kinds of things and then and then suddenly you've realized you've not taken a break and you know people for me anyway a lot of people are getting burnt out and and you know they're not taking the holiday days if they're employees for fear of maybe losing the job and and this work from home you know wasn't you know hasn't turned out to be the nice work life balance people hoped it might be no i mean i i think this next six months could be worse than the last six months but it's during the winter i think people's resolve and then he's gone down because of what's happened and i i don't want to be doomsday but i do think we've got a very tough six months ahead of us um i mean it doesn't matter who i talk to what the more age group what gender uh what social background whatever everybody is feeling it every in there are different ways and some feeling it more than others but i don't know anybody's not feeling it now a lot of a lot of people i did um i did a podcast on burnout the other day and i had i was inundated with with comments a lot a lot of people are just you know it's tiring it's tiring you know they haven't taken holiday days i think it's it's it's a key thing i don't know about in in your in your firm um but i think a lot of people have you know just not taken holiday they haven't wanted to just do a staycation or whatever and and you roll out of bed and you start working and your work is your home and your home is your work and i think it just you know overall it just builds up to you know people need to find a bit of balance um and whether that's time or four or what but to your earlier point actually it's easy to find balance if you've got space um and it's easy to find balance if you're having not having to have two a couple with both at work with two kids under the age of 10 i mean the stress is the strain of that i just can't imagine um what they like i was um i was lucky who i say lucky i mean my wife um was working in intensive care with covid patients the whole way through lockdown so you know tough tough job um but the kid the the schools took my kids our kids so i kids i could work a lot of my friends you know and our kids are like six and four um i mean they couldn't do a full day you know like one parent would do the morning and the other parent would do the afternoon and i think mostly that was acceptable for most companies you know they understood that that was the the scenario put the kids to bed to go back to work again they can both work the same and that that you get this ridiculous situation there's no break at all um yeah we certainly encourage if we knew that situation we say we're expecting to work half a day and that's it yeah now whether you do that i mean you you can monitor you can actually monitor it and if we know somebody's continually preaching it you say oh you know you sure you're doing the right thing here getting people to take four days is weird it is it's a positive instruction whilst we expect you to take your holidays right um but actually getting people to do it's a different thing so you've you've also found that people for one reason or another have just wanted to get into their work and not not take time off yeah i think it's um a takes longer doing it virtually i mean i think if you live out of town a lot of people say god i'm enjoying not doing the commute and i get that um although a lot of people who do long commute work on the commute anyway it's not dead time nowadays yeah and this this sort of thing about being at home and if you're lucky to have some back garden whatever and with the lovely weather i mean when i was stuck in the media believe it or not the weather in the uk was better than in buda it was lovely it was lovely here it was blowing a hoolly and pouring with rain the whole thing i ring my wife up every day i would say like well i was you said oh it's about 30 it was it did help people we see we're not good and then we've got the shorter days now and you know i just think it's going to be really really difficult at a personal level a family level and at a corporate level and i think the best thing to do is to be aware of it and talk about it you know probably share from half time i think in this type of situation that is really true the the more people are open about it but when you get people talking oh do you feel like that exactly how i feel and then you say oh i'm not on my own yeah the shared challenge yeah we feel better individually if we think that what we're going through other people train the same um i used to do uh the old video conference with mates when i was out in the media just to and my friends were really good but i knew i was out of my own there and we we i made more contact with people there doing that than i had done for years actually i mean it's not the same as meeting up um but you can you can help diffuse the situation by communication yeah definitely definitely i've probably got closer to my team over the over the last six months because we're doing you know a daily call half an hour i've been calling up my my team every morning checking in how they're getting up what they're getting up how they're doing and i don't know it's just brought people together like everyone's going through to your point the same experience it's new for everyone you know whether you've just started your career or you're leading a company it's you know no one's gone through this before the people i feel really sorry for are from the age of a level through till about 25 maybe 30 i mean i know a number of my mates kids who have graduated we took the ones that graduated last year i was speaking to one he he had a decent degree from Newcastle i think it was um i said well how many people in your year have got a job and he said 50 percent i said well it doesn't sound too bad he said yeah but half of the 50 percent are on furlough yeah do they have a job at the end of furlough when some of them have never actually worked because they just suck a home on furlough actually if you analyse it it may be as little as 25 percent of um group a college have got a job and there's no real expectation of getting a job in the next two to three years and then what they're frightened about is the longer you don't get a job the more difficult it's going to be to get a job and i have so much sympathy and how do you have aspiration when you're in that kind of situation and i've heard them you know i don't really care about COVID-19 he's not doing anything to me but i'm being locked down i'm losing my social life i'm losing my career and i know that i'm going to have an increased tax bill for the next 30 years and i have some sympathy with that position actually yeah i mean and also the other thing is if even if so for young people that do have a job i mean for me i i learned so much from sitting next to my managers you know the people you just listen even you know just listening to someone on the phone or seeing how they behave the way they act dressed off like that um and and they've lost that now you know a lot of senior people i speak to are saying well actually i quite enjoy it at home and they're not coming in so much the younger people who want to come in they're like well my boss isn't coming in and and so so the learning opportunity they're missing as well and also you find that you know companies if they are hiring at that at that entry level people would rather hire someone for a little bit of experience you know it's like well you know it's easier to train them or they they know a little bit of what they're doing so it's i think we've got to be a bit braver maybe and just give people an opportunity we we still even though we're you know effectively our first year we still did an internship program in the summer and we had i can't about 20 i think oh brilliant um and most of the time there were virtual we did have a closing ceremony and the most came in for that and it was great they were energized they felt they were doing something they felt they've learned something one of the things we do is some of the individual departments they have a a virtual chat line open the whole time okay so they've got we've got one three to work from another one which is alongside which you can just chat on there or listen to other people saying it's again it's not the same but yeah improve it a bit yeah it's not it's not just the younger person learning from the senior person which is a point well made but from a corporate point of view i reckon some of the best ideas and some of the best decisions are made in the coffee queue or waiting for the lift yeah and then that's when you get the spontaneity and the wacky comment and often those which is what sparks a more serious conversation which might not have happened had that through a lying conversation happened and we can certainly see that we're lacking that spontaneity that we used to have and we missed that terribly yeah i guess it's a good segue into have you had to kind of given some of those things a missing have you had to adapt your leadership style in this in this kind of virtual world now well i've always i've already talked about having to chair meetings differently it's not as good it's not as effective but if you try and carry on chairing as you used to it doesn't work so you have to adapt on that side yeah for me what i'm doing and i'm i'm in unusual situations i don't have direct operational responsibility and quite a bit of my job is mentoring nowadays anyway so i have rolling out conversations once a month for a whole ton of people and i give them you know one time for an hour sometimes we talk about one issue sometimes we just talk shop sometimes i broaden to house a family and whatever yeah to keep that communication going our group executive we meet once a month for two days and once a week for about a couple of hours depending on what's going on and we managed to keep that going reasonably successfully but i've had three conversations today about people saying you know what we need to be together we need to talk and what i have observed is things that have become caused a certain amount of friction and if you don't get on top of that it gets worse than friction happen more frequently virtually than they do when you're together but if you rise you're going up a blind alley or it's getting difficult you can back off or you say look tell you what let's go to for a beer tonight never chat about it or when we go for a cup of coffee never chat about now and that that sort of one-on-one personal interaction diffuses tension yes it's more difficult i think to diffuse tension virtually and also you have and it I rise it don't you yes it's more formal it's can i have a can we have a chat you can't just you know i don't know you've just passing comment to someone at a desk do you fancy grabbing a a coffee or a walk or something um yeah it's it's it's more you've got to be more structured it's more formal you've got to work maybe a bit harder at it virtually yeah definitely how if how have you found personally changing your working patterns i mean i guess you were traveling a lot you know you're you're in the office you're meeting people you're walking around the city you know like all of that that great buzz and energy you get from like going into the office and and walking around the city has it been difficult to adapt one of the things i missed is going not going out to the city club which is a tourist shop for the insurance industry and you can go for a long time we spend 20 minutes half an hour there and you learn more than half an hour you learn in a week you know that that that humans i think a lot of people know um myself included um i'm slightly different but my role is different to many people there and because i've been doing a capital raise of significance i mean those those are really time-consumptive and you just came from call to call to call so i mean we've just about done that i'm just feeling i'm getting my personal life back amazing this is your second capital raise as well isn't it yeah yeah um 18 months later and it's rough and it's rough again amazing that's a different story but i mean i mean my life has not been whether i was operating virtually or not i'm particularly when you're dealing with america like i was you know you're used to doing those things by telephone calls actually you do far more conference calls now than you used to which would be telephone calls and the conference calls are better than telephone calls yeah to you know when you're dealing outside your own time zone and to factor it's virtual um i it's certainly no worse than it was it argues better okay so your your phone calls and now video yeah so they're saying let's hop on a video okay yeah i i i've started using face time which i never used to do and every now and again kids would do face time with me but i mean you know as a matter of course i do face time with my wife now never used to do that and being able to do face time and if it's one-on-one and you want to have a quick conversation do it on face time yeah and yeah i know i'm i'm boring old fart and you probably did all the years but honestly my generation basically did not do face time no but no but the norm before the pandemic was still a phone call yes it would have been it would have been a bit odd unless i'd organized it to just do a video call with someone whereas whereas now it's it's the norm it's amazing that zoom has become a verb as well i mean you know so quickly you know let's hop on a zoom or so i think it's you know i prefer face to face but i mean this is is great and it's here to stay for sure yeah and that's the way we're talking is happening because we knew each other previously yes we met face we met in person on that that was the foundation and i this is my earlier point if you've already built the foundation personally continue moving on on this medium it's okay creating it on this medium is more difficult without doubt yes yes i've also found so in in business that relate relationships have been so important and so much of the work that we've done over the pandemic has been from people that we have existing relationships with that i've known already i've worked with i think it's quite tough to win new business over over a medium like this i think it is although i mean i've been doing investor calls with people i've met before all my life and and actually you know closing closing an investor a deal virtually i've never done that before my life you'd always eventually have to face it was part of the process well it just doesn't happen now so you've got to do the whole lot this way um yeah and it you know it's we as a board met in Bermuda last week and the first on the board we met face to face since march and every single member of the board was so pleased to be there it's it they were like kids you know it's really well and we had a dinner one evening at Bermuda which you were allowed to do over there and um we actually didn't talk shop we just had a just had a raise and um i think it would be so relieved just to be together not confronted with an issue just chat enjoy each other's company and talk about the bigger picture very hard to do virtually that oh yeah we're human i mean ultimately we want human contact you know i was reading um comment who it was now but i was reading a an article i think in the ft by a psychiatrist and she was saying that often the feeling people get after a video call is similar to grief um it's you feel very drained it takes a lot of your energy away and she said you know subconsciously people are are missing that you know that face to face because if you you know you meet a mate and you have a great chat it's very energizing but often these videos are quite draining um and in the business in a business discussion you may well have some pleasantries but not very many you go straight into the business bit then quite often when you finish without realizing you'll spend 10 or 15 20 minutes just saying we'll chat whereas this stuff i've got to go i've got to call in and say bye you know and it's sort of finished yeah like and you're off the next and then you know you're looking you're often looking at yourself or you know it's it's all isn't it you're like yourself staring back at you you're looking you're not quite sure where to look and something it's always so hard to look at the camera you know it's just a funny a funny thing but the risk of being laboratory you know do you know what i meant to go through three meetings ago i still haven't got back to this the longer i'm uncomfortable like that that just sort of so it's a given given like this is here to stay what does it mean for so like let's say the design of your office because even when people go back you know people are still going to be working at home right you're still going to have maybe i don't know two or three of you in the office five people at home you're going to have to crowd around the camera and do you do you visit the kind of the near future looking like that i think the near future is quite hard to work out because of what's just happened um i think we're moving before this last shutdown was a gradual increase of people in the office reason given previously um and i think most people have decided given the of their own volition they'd like to work in the office two or three days a week at least but they'd love to be home for four days of say um and do two days work the problem from that point of view as a boss is the most popular day at work in our firm is thursdays i don't know why but thursdays the place is absolutely humming and you go on monday morning is nobody there you go on monday or friday is nobody there so we are going to have to say lay down an edict you if you're going to come in more than one day we you must come in either monday or friday otherwise we're sort of populating the office properly any once a week or maybe twice a week and that's not effective now i mean clearly um the space per head has increased hugely so so is to meet and we're taking it very seriously so is to meet the requirements yeah um it's around about a third of the population you got on one floor than it was and you can push it to a half but you're on the edge then and we've taken the view we're not going to do that and it's funny because i was thinking to myself because you're just taking another floor which is not cheap oh dear we contracted to age itself have we done a bad thing yeah well we're mad um but the truth of the matter is at the moment having extra space when it does gradually go up means that we can house a lot more people than we didn't have the extra space yes going forward well i think that's a different issue i mean i've never ceased to be made tell office buildings have been developing around the city for the last 15 years we we all know that the population the workforce in the city is going to go down because of technology and that has been on the wall for five years at least yeah it's beginning to happen and what's happened would probably accelerate that so the underlying office requirement is going down anyway you put that alongside the fact that probably depending on circumstances people be working two to three days a week the days a week in the office well than five that decreases your if you manage your property decrease how much space you have and then there's a dominant effect so you're going to have all this spare office space in the city i mean i tell you what getting prime office space in the city um still quite hard and still quite expensive with the minute you go down to that second tier which is perfectly adequate but isn't quite as eco-friendly as it could be and doesn't have all the things you get in modern days by living the rents are going down through the floor on that stuff um so what happens with buildings i say oh well that's easy to get changed into residential well fine but if the if the working population in the city has gone down 50% why does it need another something residential who's going to buy you know rent that or whatever so i do think that i mean i wouldn't want to be in the property world for the key in china there's so many there's also so many buildings still to go up yeah and there's a big one on fenchurch behind hiscox is that new big one i mean i mean i don't know i mean i let's hope they will get filled because that means that the city is uh is humming again but you know we're in the scalpel and um from a standing start i think about two years ago it is virtually fully let now really but yeah but that's the prime it's in a prime location yeah right by lords yeah and new building great views as you see yes um so something like that is still worth a premium and there's a reason for that because it works and it's convenient and you in the right hot spot for the insurance industry but i mean broker of that insurance i'm sorry um but the minute you get outside that three minute walk from loyds which is right between willis tells what's an aeon and it's a they're they're literally about a minute's walk apart all three you know being being there is where the action is that's where the people are if in that hub it's fine but when you get just even even a five minute walk radius outside of that it goes down you get to 10 minutes 10 minutes again but it'd be interesting to see though because you talked about being in the hub and the thick of it yeah pre pre pandemic it'll be interesting to see you know if more and more people are saying to their staff and i don't know if you've said this to them but a lot of people are saying you know you choose how you work right like it's you know the buzzwords work from anywhere you know you want to come in a day or two great you want to work at home great local coffee shop fine so when all this kind of washes over and whatever the new normal is kind of starts to uh to emerge it'd be interesting to see if if indeed that is going to be as busy and kind of hubby as it was well it goes back to the common mate a moment ago the volume of workers in the city was going to go down anyway because of technology yeah and that at every level it could communication right up to digital and ai and all that stuff you know the whole range of outputs there so there was a downward trend anyway i think what's happened now is it's been accelerated by maybe as much as two years which in technology term is a long time yeah but i don't see personally businesses where there is human interaction with the outside world i don't see that becoming virtual per se because people actually want um to to to me and in the the brokers now fraternity they hate it because they say it's much easier to broke and get the unrighted to do something if it's face to face yes it's got to sit down next to him he's got nowhere to hide you just sit and talk to you whereas you know if it's virtually just so sorry i'm gonna go another call down it goes yeah brokers would tell you absolutely they want to broke to the underwriter face to face so when you got that people to people way of doing business i don't really see that's going to go away okay a lot of back office stuff a lot of the moving um paid files around the city we was going anyway um it's just accelerated that um but i'd be surprised at you i maybe have to be humble by on this but i'd be surprised if the human interaction went and in fact if anything you might just increase a bit once we get through this but people are going to be so pleased to be able to even you're doing business sorry little social experience isn't it oh for me i i mean i i get so much energy from meeting someone you know i really do i'm i'm i'm very i'm extrovert i just i just really enjoy it sit down have a coffee talk about whatever i just i just hope that because you know less less office space less expenses and a lot of companies are doing that a lot of companies i speak to are trying to reduce their office space to save cost and to your point they probably won't need as much space but i just hope for you know we talked about kind of front office people you know insurance brokers people that you know they're selling stuff or they need to see people face to face but a lot of people you know um they don't they could do their job from home i i just hope that they are able to come in they're able to to choose to come in and get that that that human interaction we're wearing a um a ceo hat my reaction that is if the ceo doesn't allow that more for him or her because actually even in the back office in fact you could argue sometimes it's fishing in the back office that human interaction is where the ideas come from it's where the common purpose comes from it's where the sharing of problems come from how many times have you talked to somebody i've got this problem at work will you sit down talk to me say you know what so do i yeah that comes from conversation not by emailing or doing the zoo yeah yeah no i really i really hope it ends up looking like that and i think a lot of people well i know a lot of people are really really desperate to come back i've got so many people haven't come back since the first lockdown you know a lot of many big companies have been closed and and as you as you mentioned i mean you know what is it between 70 50 to 70 percent are working in bigger companies um and they've just not been able to and they've had this you know this this routine of you know eat sleep work repeat kind of thing where they're not yeah they're not moving and they're not getting out so it'd be interesting to see last question on this before we um before we end do you think people are more productive at home i think it depends on the home circumstances and i think it depends on the individual i mean i can tell you um the people now firm the work better at home and the ones that work less hard it's not very difficult to monitor you just look at the email traffic and how much email traffic is going on during the day so if you if you think somebody's not working honestly it's quite it's quite easy to find out yeah there's no activity um but there are some people who'd like to work on their own anyway and depending on your job i mean some jobs actually what you need piece of work for at least two thirds of you working day so you can be singly minded and focused yeah and i think those kind of people who've got a good worth ethic probably get through more people who are easily distracted um and the people who've got young children uh and people who've got other outside commitments um also get distracted and become less efficient so i i really don't think one size fits all i think some people are better and some people worse that's true that's true there's also a very interesting uh kind of thing going around so i can't remember the psychologist's names but a lot of people are implementing a fake commute so you know they can't go into office but the commute the commute is is great right it's like i mean you go from people are either walking or they're meditating or some are choosing to sleep in and forgetting about it but but the point is is that that that kind of movement in the morning just separates and breaks up your day and starts your day well and it's important to put into your routine i think yeah i mean it does i mean i'm lucky because i've got this is my study i'm talking from in london and i this is where i work and i'm upstairs so upstairs is where the kitchen and the drawing room and the dining room you know that's where i relax so i i i can in my in location have my workspace and and i notice a difference within bermuda i didn't have a separate office um and so is to keep the living area free of clutter for entertaining i put my desktop in my bedroom and the problem with that is your bedroom is your workplace and that isn't so good and that i did find that impactful actually yeah yeah yeah if you're if you're lucky enough to have different spaces i guess yeah you use them well if you're not i think you know just getting out and moving and then breaking up the day is is really really important so Stephen thank you so much for joining me um always great to hear your insights and um it's also great to hear from companies that are growing you know you've like tripled in size since february um which is great and yeah really really inspiring well thank you so much enjoyed chatting um i hope your list was up on the edge of it that's all i hope definitely definitely thank you very much and speak to you again soon see you soon thanks bye bye bye