Boardroom Series EP05 - Insurance Coffee House: Insurance Boards, Crisis Governance, Board Professionalisation & Reputation - Dr Susan Fleming, Independent Director (RLI Corp)

The Insurance Coffee House with Nick Hoadley · 2026-03-10 · 44 min

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Episode notes

On this episode of the Insurance Coffee House, Nick Hoadley is joined by Dr Susan Fleming, an experienced independent director with more than 25 years across insurance, asset management, and financial services. Susan currently serves on the boards of RLI Corp and Virtus Investment Partners, and has previously held director roles at Endurance Specialty, PXRE Group, Quanta Capital, and others. Susan shares how she first entered financial services, starting at SNL Securities before moving into Morgan Stanley’s M&A group focused on financial institutions. That early exposure led her into insurance private equity at Insurance Partners, later Capital Z Partners, where she spent years working on complex and often distressed insurance transactions. She reflects on the pace and intensity of that period, the analytical grounding it gave her, and how it led to her first public board seat at just 29 years old. The conversation explores what it was like entering the boardroom at a young age, why private equity-backed board roles differ from independent directorships, and how board work has changed over the past two decades.

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