In 2023, Augment Risk burst onto the reinsurance scene, announcing $100m in backing from Altamont Capital with a promise to “revolutionise insurance risk arbitrage”.
The broker, which launched in both Miami and London in July of that year, has since gone on to sweep up senior talent from across the reinsurance world as it started to aggressively scale up the business.
Among the most senior recruits in recent months has been the arrival of the new chief marketing officer, David Poulteney, the gregarious senior marketer who’d spent the previous 12 years at broking behemoth Aon.
For Poulteney, the setup at Augment represents a vast departure from operations at Aon, where substantial teams and resources are available to support significant campaigns across all marketing channels.
However, he spent much of his previous role working closely with the 2024 Financial Promoter of the Year – Alexandra Lewis – which has undoubtedly helped shape his view of marketing approaches in his new role.
“After my 12 years at Aon, I was looking for a role where I could really make a tangible impact in marketing and communications,” he says. “I wanted to find a business with exceptional leadership, innovation at its core, and with a true strategic vision. Augment Risk offered all three.”
Thinking big
Augment certainly has bold ambitions. The company placed more than $1bn in premiums in its first year, which established it as a challenger that can navigate complex risk and build relevant capital solutions. It now wants to do this at a much larger scale.
It is these business objectives, that Poulteney has been brought in to support. Having moved to the firm at the start of 2025, he has been handed a mandate to establish the business with a reputation for being client-focussed, that champions creativity and efficiency.
He has opted for a dynamic approach to delivering these objectives, establishing a core set of fixed deliverables which are flanked by more agile assets and campaigns which will be heavily influenced by the external market environment.
“We have our core milestones we are working to, but we want to change gear when we need to,” he explains. “Our agility means we can pivot and react to market trends and issues very quickly.”
Followers of the business’s initial marketing activities may have already witnessed a comprehensive suite of thought leadership – Augment Insights – which has been designed to amplify the profile of senior subject matter experts within the business.
“We want to make more of our talented minds within the firm,” Poulteney explains. “That means having a strong, bold, consistent message. As part of that, we are trying to embolden colleagues to be brand ambassadors. Our people have incredible networks.”
Getting connected
Augment has certainly built a team of well-connected individuals and Poulteney is no exception. His skillset
is evidenced by his Chartered Marketer status, but it is his contact book that separates him from his peers.
Within the insurance industry, Poulteney is incredibly well-liked and his network extends into neighbouring areas of finance and the media. His connections in the media sector are something he hopes will serve Augment well in the months to come as he eyes public relations and third party content distribution as a key part of his future corporate communications strategy.
“We have already partnered with a number of key publications,” he explains. “I think it is important to collaborate with media partners to amplify our messaging and look at where the client need is through the year.”
Poulteney plans to use PR and third party content as a way of making the most of the major industry events that typically punctuate the reinsurance calendar. This, he sees as essential because Augment doesn’t have the luxury of just hoping for brand visibility alone.
“We want to do more than just attend the events,” he explains. “It’s a cohesive approach, where we will research who is attending each event and think carefully about the profile of the person that we want to get
in front of.”
Bespoke approach
While he recognises this bespoke approach may be labour intensive, Poulteney would like to identify prospects in advance, discuss the themes that all Augment’s key stakeholders would like to have during that meeting and approach any messaging collectively.
“We’re looking at a broad mix of target events. We’re working towards Miami Reinsurance Week and The World Captive Forum. Then, there’s also the more traditional events like RVS in Monte Carlo. We won’t be saying yes
to any event without doing the research.
“If we are going there, we want to try and meet the client together, in one meeting, at one table, rather than the client seeing three different Augment people throughout the day.”
Poulteney believes the collaborative culture at Augment will afford the marketing team the time to get ahead of major events.
“I know a lot of firms use the buzz word ‘collaboration’ these days, but here, there really is plenty of evidence of it. The leadership team at Augment Risk have worked hard to foster a culture where collaboration and bold ideas can thrive.
“Employees should all feel able to contribute to transformative outcomes. We want to maintain the entrepreneurial spirit as we grow, to protect that approach to cross collaboration so it becomes the norm.”
Augment’s leadership team have asked that the new marketing function also work to support on lead generation. Sales enablement is, therefore, a key aspect of Poulteney’s initial focus.
“It’s important that the marketing collateral we produce manifestly supports new business enquiries and facilitates open conversations for our brokers.
“A recent CEO podcast that we recorded with The Voice of Insurance directly led to enquiries where people felt compelled to reach out. To me, that’s the greatest form of marketing.”
Strategic thinking
An English and American Literature graduate, the Essex-based CMO employs strategic thinking in his approach to client acquisition. He acknowledges that marketing alone cannot entirely shape the fortunes of a business, but he believes the key ingredients to success are in fostering the closest possible collaboration between sales and marketing.
This is a view that was endorsed by none other than renowned business theorist, Philip Kotler, who once wrote
in Harvard Business Review that “companies see substantial improvement on performance metrics” when sales and marketing work in close collaboration.
“Sales cycles are shorter, market-entry costs go down, and the cost of sales is lower. When sales and marketing are aligned, clear boundaries between the two exist, but they’re flexible. Marketers confer with salespeople on important accounts. They play a role in transactional, or commodity, sales as well,” according to Kotler.
While Poulteney is keen not to overstate what is possible from marketing’s involvement in client meetings, he does share Kotler’s view.
“Marketing can’t wave a magic wand, but working in partnership with the brokers helps to ensure that people have trust in the brand. It’s important that the marketing function is allowed to participate in client meetings,
where possible.
“Seeing deals evolving in front of you informs the approach you take. It is all part of the education. I don’t know many places where they see the value of having marketing in those meetings but it is incredibly useful.
“An old colleague of mine once said to me, how can you market these solutions without spending time with the people who are selling it? I think that’s right, it’s important for marketers to spend more time with those in front line broking or sales positions.”
Market analysis
Analysing market behaviours at a time when the market cycle is shifting is key for Poulteney and he doesn’t intend to limit this to qualitative based intelligence. Part of this strategy is to construct a market monitoring dashboard that will capture the various client conversations and connect that with the interactions with proprietary content online.
“It’s important to think commercially and not just with a siloed marketing brain, so we’ve started building out a set of metrics to monitor how people consume, or engage with, our content.
“At some point, I also want to send out a brand and behavioural survey to better understand what people associate with the Augment brand. From this, I’d like to build an indicator that monitors views on our brand and tracks awareness.”
This decision to start building out a trackable set of metrics is rooted in an approach that is designed to emphasise Augment’s value proposition of “thinking differently” and “cultivating an environment that challenges the status quo”. As any CMO at a challenger firm will tell you, however, ensuring that message cuts through in a market that is saturated with brand stories is a tough gig.
Despite this, Poulteney believes that the integration of marketing with decision making at board level will ultimately be the reason why Augment is able to scale quickly.
“At each leadership meeting, marketing has dedicated time which ensures we are working towards one strategic vision. But our interactions are intra-day too. Today, I’m sat with the head of legacy on one side and
the head of parametric on the other.
“We have been talking about our forthcoming event in Miami where there is crossover between all of our roles. This transparency allows us to keep focussed on the client.”
When asked what success looks like for Poulteney, he responds with commercially-focussed objectives without a hint of hesitation.
“We are aiming for an increase in clients’ enterprise. The foundations have been built, but there is so much more we can do. We are not just interested in selling products in boxes, our culture is ‘client rather than class of business’. That is the cornerstone of what we are doing in marketing and as a wider organisation.”