Claims Veteran Peter Macdonald Talks to Risk & Insurance

In late December, 2025, Dan Reynolds, the editor in chief of Risk & Insurance, caught up with Peter Macdonald, the chief claims officer for Munich Re Specialty – North America.  What follows is a transcript of that discussion, edited for length and clarity.

Risk & Insurance: Thanks for meeting with us Peter. You’ve been in the claims side of the business for a while now. How has your function evolved over time?

Peter Macdonald: The first thing I always think about in this job is that I’m leading people. That certainly hasn’t changed over the years I’ve been doing it — it’s the critical component of this job.

What has changed, though, is how you lead people, and it’s changed a lot in a really good way. People want to be more engaged in helping drive how their job is done, and that’s been a great thing. When we’re thinking about new tools, new technologies, or just how we do things—whether we’re changing processes or tools — the team wants to be very engaged in that.

When I started, there was a lot more top-down direction, i.e. “Here’s how we’re going to do things.” What’s different now, and what I think makes us all better, is a lot more back and forth with the people who are actually performing the work on the front line, dealing with our customers and our business partners. They help shape how their work goes, so that’s been a change—not in leading people, but in how to lead people.

R&I: Was transitioning from a traditional top-down leadership approach to a more collaborative style an adjustment for you?

PM: It’s an adjustment, but it wasn’t an immediate one — more of a gradual adjustment over time. It is something that, every once in a while, I need to remind myself of.

But that’s the best way to engage people — to make sure they have a big stake in ownership of how things are done.

R&I: How have customer expectations in the insurance industry evolved over time?

PM: Insurance is fundamentally a customer business, and that hasn’t changed. We want our customers to be well taken care of, and we want to get them the best outcomes possible.

What has changed is the speed at which everything happens now compared to how it used to be. I’m old enough that I used to order from a catalog and wait two weeks or a month to get my product. Now, Christmas is two days away, and I’m still ordering things that will be here on time.

I’m a customer too, and all of our customers share those same expectations. The expectation for the speed at which things happen has accelerated significantly —  even over the beginning of my career, but certainly over the last five to ten years. The focus is on maintaining the same quality, or increasing it, while also increasing speed.

Another significant change relates to employee development and cross-departmental collaboration. There has been a growing recognition of the need for tight alignment between claims, underwriting, actuaries, and all the different components that make an insurance company work successfully. This has really changed over the years.

Enlightened companies now want claims at the table for major decisions. They view claims much more as a business partner than simply as a function. This has been a very positive change.

R&I: What are the keys to successful collaboration between claims and underwriting?

PM: A critical acknowledgment from enlightened business partners is that we only succeed if underwriters and claims are closely aligned. Whether you’re talking about a new product, pricing, geographical expansion, or changes to products — unless those key pieces are all closely aligned, you won’t end up with successful business in the end.

This means better outcomes for our insureds, better risk selection by our business partners, and better products that deliver both what the customer expects and what the business expects. When claims is at the table on the front end, you get better selection by the businesses and better underwriting decisions.

There’s been an increasing acknowledgment over my career that businesses and claims need to be fully aligned in order to achieve what the business needs to achieve.

R&I: When did you first get the impression that you were getting a seat at the table?

PM: I’d say about ten years ago.

That could be related to the companies I was working for. Maybe they were particularly ahead of the curve, or maybe other people move at different speeds. But it’s especially true here at Munich Re — I’m truly a part of the business leadership here as much as anywhere.

R&I: What does success look like when evaluating your team’s performance throughout the claims process?

PM: Speed is important. Customer expectations have increased, so the speed at which we get in touch with customers and resolve their claims is very important and has changed over time. However, getting great outcomes is the primary focus for us, our customers, and our internal and external business partners.

Even though expectations around speed and measuring speed are increasingly important, it should never come at the cost of outcomes. We truly believe that by having employees feel satisfied in their roles, they’re going to take the best care of our customers and our business partners. Employee satisfaction is certainly a critical thing that we are always measuring here.

I believe we’re performing very well at Munich Re when you look at our employee satisfaction, our retention, and our ability to grow people’s careers. That’s a critical component of success.

At the end of the day, we’re aligned with our business partners. Business performance is the ultimate measure of success—we all want this business to succeed and grow profitably, and we want our customers to continue to grow successfully and profitably as well. Those are our ultimate measures of success.

R&I: Can you delve into the role that predictive analytics and emerging technologies play in your operations?

PM: First and foremost, what we want to do is hire great people and train them well. Human expertise and the ability to take care of our customers and interact with our business partners is paramount.

When we look at technology, we approach it with discipline, purpose, and the right data governance. Whether it’s production technology or newly emerging tools like artificial intelligence, they’re there to provide insights and help streamline administrative functions.

Technology is also there to help adjusters make decisions or determine what to do next on a claim, but never to replace human judgment. We never look at technology or AI for its own sake — it has to make something better for us or for our customers.

R&I: In what aspects of your work is AI being utilized?

PM: Munich Re and our subsidiaries are constantly exploring new uses of AI. We have a lot of governance around it to make sure we’re using it in ways that will ultimately be productive.

We have many use cases that we’re both testing and have deployed at our company and at Munich Re more broadly. Along the same lines that we view technology more broadly, it’s to help provide insights to adjusters and to help get claims to the right place as early as possible. Ultimately, the goal is to let adjusters focus on decision making and taking care of our customers. &