Building the next great specialty insurance platform.
Thirty years building companies where technology meets insurance. Now building Waypoint Specialty into a billion-dollar premium platform, one owned niche at a time.
The shift from admitted to E&S markets is old news. Everyone has access to the same wholesale shelf, and access alone no longer differentiates anyone.
What differentiates now is exclusivity: products built for a specific class of business, underwritten with discipline, supported by purpose-built technology, niche specific tech-based risk management, and owned by the partners who sell them. Agencies and MGAs that control a niche control their growth. Those that rely on carrier relationships, contingencies and incentive trips are renting it.
Waypoint exists to make that ownership possible at scale.
Waypoint's goal is a portfolio of exclusive, relationship and technology-driven programs writing $1 billion in premium within ten years.
Each program is a business in its own right, with its own product, technology and distribution, risk management, backed by our capital. Together they form a platform no single carrier relationship can replicate.
As Founder and CEO, I built Waypoint Specialty to do one thing at scale. We study a large agency's or MGA's book of business, identify the niche where they already have an edge, and build them an exclusive, proprietary insurance product around it. Then we hand over the product along with the solution specific strategy and training to take it to market.
Behind every program is proprietary technology designed for that niche, and my own capital invested alongside it. We don't advise from the sidelines. We build, we own, and we stay.
Three principles guide how we operate: invest like an owner, partner for the long game, and always find the next niche.
• Built Besnard Insurance's niche programs from $5 million to more than $200 million in premium, the proof of the model Waypoint is now scaling
• Launched multiple niche MGA and MGU platforms and built a wholesale division from the ground up
• Established a Lloyd's coverholder operation with exclusive Lloyd's and domestic carrier partnerships
• Built delegated authority relationships managing hundreds of millions in premium
• Developed technology-driven underwriting and placement tools that became a competitive advantage for partners
• Led a 200-person global organization as Senior Director at Convergys
I started my career at Andersen Consulting (Accenture), advising Fortune 100 companies on enterprise transformation, process optimization and technology integration. At 25, I founded Galleon Solutions and spent nearly a decade leading ERP implementations and business process redesign for some of the largest companies in the world.
In 2008 I brought that toolkit into insurance. The industry was ripe for it: complex products, fragmented distribution, and underwriting processes that technology could make sharper and faster. Over sixteen years at Besnard Insurance, 2024 merger with Shepherd Insurance, and later as Founder/President of Shepherd Specialty, I built niche programs, carrier/market partnerships and the systems to run them.
Most insurance leaders came up through underwriting or sales. I came up through strategy, systems and business design. That's why I see programs the way I do: as products to be engineered, not policies to be placed.
Waypoint Specialty — Founder / Chief Executive Officer
Tampa, Florida
Shepherd Specialty — Founder / President, 2024–2026
Following the merger of Besnard Insurance with Shepherd Insurance
Besnard Insurance — CEO / President, 2008–2024
Grew niche program premium from $5 million to more than $200 million; built a wholesale division and a Lloyd's coverholder operation
Convergys — Senior Director, 2007–2008
Global team leader over a 200-person team
Galleon Solutions — Founder, CEO / President, 1998–2007
IT and business consulting for Fortune 100 companies; ERP implementation and process redesign
Andersen Consulting (Accenture) — Consultant, 1996–1998
Enterprise transformation / strategy and technology integration for Fortune 100 clients
Herbert Wertheim College of Business
B.S., Management Information Systems; Minor, Computer Science
Founder, FSU Fishing Society
Affiliations
Member, YPO
Past Board Chair of Friends of the Children Tampa Bay, and board member of LifePath Hospice and Sunrise Shelter of Pasco County.
Adam lives in Tampa with Mindee, his wife of nearly 30 years, and their three children.
If you lead an agency, MGA or carrier and want to own your growth rather than rent it, I'd like to hear from you. Learn more about my current work at waypointspecialty.com.
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