Page Grundmuller, senior vice-president at Axa XL Bermuda, will retire this month after an astounding thirty-four years of service with the company.

Page is well-known and respected within the commercial insurance world as an underwriter with a remarkable depth of knowledge of the excess casualty market, her clients, and the forms and policies that distinguish Bermuda as a market of choice for high-severity, low frequency insurance coverage.

At the time of her retirement she will be the longest-serving employee of Axa XL globally.

Joining Page’s team in January 2022, recently promoted to underwriter and still having much to learn in the new role, I was astonished at the patience and determination Page had for training young underwriters.

Someone who could have, at various points in her career, carved-out a more high-level corporate decision making role, she still took pride in, and saw the benefit of developing newcomers to the industry.

It was only after speaking with a few of her former colleagues that I realised that this was Page’s favourite aspect of the job and the one she found to be her calling within the diverse role as head of an underwriting team - a manager of people.

Page joined what was then Exel Limited, in early 1990, a year before the four year-old former group captive became the first Bermuda insurance company to go public.

Her first role was as manager of Policy Issuance, a position not dissimilar to the middle office and operational roles that are the backbone of most insurance departments on the island today.

This explains the immense patience and respect Page had throughout her career for underwriting assistants and operations professionals within her department.

Like many Bermudians during that time, Page started her career in the hospitality industry and only incidentally, with the changing nature of the local economy, did it follow into a commercial insurance job.

XL at the time was located in Cumberland House, near City Hall parking lot, 11 years before ACE and XL would complete the construction of their global headquarters on the site of the former Bermudiana Hotel property.

Diana Downs, who first hired Page at XL, had the following to say about those early years: “[Page] had considerable experience in managing staff which was a prerequisite for the job, as the policy issuance in those days was manual and the volume of documentation considerable requiring numerous staff members.

“It also required someone who could create processes and had an attention for detail and accuracy. Page had all of this, but was faced with a steep learning curve with respects to insurance and the understanding of how the XL GL policy worked.

“This, Page overcame through determination and very hard work. Her success in running the policy department opened up an opportunity to move into underwriting as an assistant.

“Her career just continued to progress and her technical knowledge grew. She was appointed underwriter and moved up the ranks to senior VP.”

Page’s tenure saw significant changes to the company as XL grew into one of the largest commercial insurance companies in the world.

The milestones she witnessed included XL’s first international expansion with XL Europe Insurance in Dublin; the retirement of Michael Kevany and promotion of Brian O’Hara as CEO; XL’s expansion into the US market in 1998; the establishment of the reinsurance division and merger with Mid Ocean Re; the near bankruptcy of the company after the 2008 financial crisis and the appointment of Mike McGavick as CEO; XL’s acquisition of Catlin Underwriting; and the acquisition of XL Catlin by Axa Group in 2018.

On the eve of its acquisition by the global insurance giant, XL had in excess of 7,000 employees in more than 20 countries. And through all that time, having walked with giants in the early years of XL, Page Grundmuller was never boastful about having been there at the beginning.

Page never changed departments and remained committed to Excess Casualty - which is one of the oldest underwriting departments on the island - on risk with some clients since the inception of the company in 1986, some of them serviced by Page for the majority of that time.

Soft-spoken, unassuming, but confident and above all kind, Page will be missed by many of her colleagues at Axa XL today and by her former colleagues and the many brokers, risk managers and insurance professionals she has interacted with over the years in Bermuda and beyond.

It will be a point of pride throughout my career that I will have been the last person to begin as an underwriter under her stewardship. I know I speak for many in wishing Page a happy next chapter as she enters her well earned retirement.

• Peter Cameron Webb, Casualty Underwriter at Ark Bermuda and former colleague of Page Grundmuller