At the Southwest Ideas Conference in Dallas, Waleed Jabsheh, president and chief executive of International General Insurance Holdings Ltd, reflected on the speciality insurer’s two-decade climb from a small family-run business to a Bermudian-domiciled company with a global footprint.

“It’s taken us 23 years to build a $700 million book of business,” Mr Jabsheh said. “And ultimately, you know, when you look at some of our larger competitors, we’re a rounding error for them. But that’s been the story of IGI — bit by bit.”

IGI is headquartered in Jordan but registered and domiciled in Bermuda, a move Mr Jabsheh said aligns the company with the core of the global insurance and reinsurance industry.

“The entity, the public entity, is a Bermudian entity,” he said. In terms of the business it pursues, “Bermuda is more of a [United States] focus,” he added in describing the island’s strategic relevance to IGI’s international ambitions.

Mr Jabsheh emphasised that IGI’s expansion has been steady rather than rapid. “We started with $25 million of capital. We’re now at a capital base of about $700 million,” he said. “We started off with a handful of employees. We’re now about 480 employees group-wide.”

IGI’s latest quarterly results reflected that disciplined approach. In the third quarter of 2025, the company posted a combined ratio of 76.5 per cent and underwriting income of $51.4 million, marking a strong improvement over the previous year. Profitability was bolstered by a lower loss ratio and tighter underwriting performance.

He described the company’s evolution as “one of very measured, disciplined, methodical, gradual growth.” He pointed to the importance of having local presence and expertise. “We’ve got eight offices worldwide. I cannot underestimate the value of having boots on the ground, local knowledge, local talent.”

In a competitive global market, Mr Jabsheh said IGI’s strategy relies on knowing its limits and playing to its strengths. “We are not a top-line-driven company,” he said. “What we have built at IGI is a very, very diversified portfolio, and we’ve done that purposely. We started with a handful of lines. We’ve added lines of business as we’ve gone along. So as I said, we’re almost 25 different lines of business across three segments: reinsurance, short-tail, longtail.”

He credited IGI’s agility to its size and structure. “We have a very flat management structure; access to people is instant,” he said. “Discipline is ingrained in our DNA — knowing when to walk away from business and when to take action.”

While IGI remains smaller than many of its peers, Mr Jabsheh said its results stand out. “We have consistently delivered results in the top 10, 15 per cent of the global insurance and reinsurance marketplace,” he said. “We’re a performance-based company culture. Our ultimate goal, our ultimate priority, is to deliver value to grow value and never sacrifice the bottom line for the expense of the top line.”

That approach has earned recognition from credit agencies. “That was actually recognised by Standard & Poors just a few weeks ago, where they upgraded our financial rating from an A- to a full A,” he noted.

For Mr Jabsheh, the company’s success comes down to patience and persistence. Growth, he said, will continue “bit by bit”.