Industry evangelist: Sean Gallagher
Passing the torch Sean Gallagher wants his family’s passion for the insurance industry to inspire future generations By John Deex
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s the son of Gallagher’s global CEO and Chairman J. Patrick Gallagher Jr, you could be forgiven for thinking Sean Gallagher is one of those rare individuals who was always going to end up in insurance. After all, his great-grandfather Arthur J Gallagher set up the renowned broking firm in Illinois in 1927. And as it has grown through the years to become a national and then a global broking giant, a Gallagher was always at the company’s helm. But despite such ancestry, Sean was given the freedom to choose his own path – before settling on insurance aged 11. It was never just about duty, though. He says he has a genuine love for the industry, and is now determined to inspire others as insurance faces up to its many modern challenges. Currently Gallagher’s Melbourne-based Head of Branches in Australia, Mr Gallagher tells Insurance News how his own insurance story started. “It was driven by a classroom project I did in year five about what my mom and dad did for a living,” he says. “I used Monopoly pieces and money to simulate insurance and catastrophes and rebuilding homes and the like, and the reaction from my classmates was so cool that I thought this is definitely what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. “So, aged 11, I would go around saying I wanted to be an insurance broker, and people would look at me like I had three heads.” After college Mr Gallagher began an internship at the family firm before starting as an entry-level producer – the US term for broker.
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insuranceNEWS
August/September 2019