Guy Carpenter Reviews

Pros

Challenging responsibilities, international exposure, sexy financial services, super smart people in the broking and GC Analytics operations. New CEO with good ideas.
The past 3 years were hard but Peter keep delivering results and strong leadership.
Great vibe!

Cons

Compensation could be better.
Perception of "big" difference between the compensation of the broking roles vs other functions

Advice to Senior Management

Reward staff functions (CSS, hr, it etc) acordignly with contributions to the firm

Pros

Vice presidents knew their jobs well and were communicating with employees in a good way. Most of the employees knew what they were doing.

Cons

There was not much relationship between employees. Everyone were doing their jobs and were not communicating much in order to create a better environment.

Pros

Very professional people, good career advancement

Cons

Salary offered is not as competitive as industry

Advice to Senior Management

Be open and honest about compensation

Pros

Guy Carpenter offers great salary and benefits (including pension!). Its offices are often in prime real estate areas. The company has a stable revenue base

Cons

Getting a position without internal connections is difficult- they often make poor hiring decisions based on non-traditional factors as client connections (i.e. most young professionals get their jobs via a connected parent, some poor dept leaders have been "found" this way).

Advice to Senior Management

Need to revisit talent management processes

Pros

Good people to work with.

Cons

Growing pains; learning how to communicate with lower level employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Better rewards for non-officers.

Pros

-Access to the industry's top brokerage professionals
-Strong emphasis on analytics and analytical tools like actuarial models, catastrophe models, financial models, including proprietary tools like Metarisk
-Exceptionally strong client base that provides employees with a unique and broad view of the industry
-The firm is diversifying it's revenue stream geographically and positioning itself well to obtain revenue from value added analytical services in future

Cons

-Despite great overall culture some high performers are challenging personalities to work with
-Soft market is challenging clients to buy less reinsurance and puts pressure on revenue and margin
-Man times there needs to be better team work between Brokers and Analytics (actuaries and cat modelers) on client teams (but in some instances it is working very well)
-Still behind in Europe, but gaining momentum

Advice to Senior Management

Continue making strides to communicate to employees
Demonstrate progress and change arising from recent senior hires
Continue to invest in analytics and talent to drive revenue

Pros

Direct line supervisor respects me
Able to set my work schedule

Cons

Only career path is if you live in NY city
too much politics and nothing gets done
resistive to change and others views

Advice to Senior Management

Less controlling - give people authority to make changes. Nothing can be done without 15 senior execs being asked. Also please replace people who leave.

Pros

Great name in industry
Daily client interaction
Lots of very smart people that care about delivering a solution to our clients
Great work life balance

Cons

Lots of management changes with many senior execs with no outline in how they all work together
Not a lot of direction
No one makes a decison and it leads to conflict between people with different ideas

Advice to Senior Management

There have been a lot of changes over the past few years and it is difficult to see the direction so there needs to be more communication.

Pros

really great people and benefits

Cons

no cons that i can think of

Advice to Senior Management

cut the fat

Pros

You won't find a more unique and interesting group of people. Integrity and respect are at the forefront of the company.

Cons

Opportunities for growth and advancement are limited, and the management continues to cut resources while trying to also increase revenue. There is very little incentive to work harder as merit seems to count for very little.

Advice to Senior Management

Recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the employees. Doing so will make stronger account teams.