Richard was booked to deliver the Forum's closing keynote on the Friday afternoon, the final substantial session before the event wrapped up. The organisers were clear on what they needed: after two days of dense, technical content, they wanted a session that would land differently. Something that would give a room full of insurance professionals; people whose day job is helping others manage risk, a genuinely human moment to reflect on and send them home with energy rather than fatigue.
Insurance broking is a relationship business. The people in that room in Malta spend their careers helping clients prepare for the moments that don't go to plan, and, more often than not, supporting them through the fallout when they do. That's an audience that understands adversity intellectually better than most. What they don't always get the chance to do, in the middle of a packed two-day conference is pause and think about resilience on a personal level, their own, and their teams'.
That's the gap the closing keynote was designed to fill. Not another market update. Not another framework. A story, told honestly, about what it actually takes to rebuild when life falls apart and what that has to say about leadership, mindset and the culture people build around them at work.
Closing a conference is a different challenge to opening one. By 2.30pm on day two, delegates have sat through keynotes, breakouts, prosecutions case studies and market briefings. Energy in the room needs rebuilding, not just filling. Richard structured the keynote to do exactly that, pulling the audience in early, building through the story and using the final stretch to connect the message directly back to the world they work in: mindset under pressure, taking ownership when things go wrong and the quiet, deliberate choices that separate people who recover from setbacks from those who don't.
The 15-minute Q&A that followed ran over which is always a good sign. Questions moved quickly from "how did you find the strength to change" to more specific, work-focused territory: how leaders spot when a team member is struggling, how organisations build genuine resilience rather than just talking about it, and how personal story-telling can be used more effectively in their own client conversations.
The conversations continued into the evening at the Forum dinner, which is often where you get the clearest read on how a session has landed. Delegates weren't just talking about the content, they were relating it back to their own teams, their own businesses, and in some cases their own personal experiences. For a room of senior leaders and business owners not used to being the ones opening up, that shift is exactly what a closing keynote should achieve: not a neat conclusion, but a genuine reset.
Willis Networks set out to end their 27th Anniversary Forum with something delegates would still be talking about after they'd flown home. Judging by the room in Malta, that's exactly what happened.
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