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We were basically running insurance companies,” the likable Barry Gale tells City A.M. of his career before joining Aon. Gale was at a Big Four consultancy firm, working on restructuring and insolvency. “But without the front-end, bringing in new clients.”

He and his colleagues soon found out that winding up insurance firms was notably more complicated than other firms. After all, the usual priority is to get the process closed up as soon as possible. In insurance, however, the thorny issue of policies underwritten in the past – and potentially claimable against in the future – made that process more challenging.

“The last thing you can do is shut down too early to prevent someone from making a claim,” he says.

“It’s bad enough in an insolvency that you might not be getting that claim paid in full, but if instead you’ve not even got the opportunity to make that claim, then we’re favouring some creditors over others.”

What that left Gale and his colleagues dealing with was the ‘tail’ – and it’s the tail of insurers’ responsibility that occupies Gale’s time as head of legacy at Aon, where he moved two years ago.

“It’s a bit like a construction project. We do the maintenance,” he says. In short, insurers who underwrote policies a few years ago need to keep a certain amount of capital on the books in case a claim comes in on that policy. That’s not necessarily the best use of that capital, which is where Gale’s team at Aon comes in, building solutions that work for all sides.

“Just because you built the project in the first place,” he says, returning to the construction metaphor, “doesn’t necessarily mean that you are the right organisation to manage the tail, or the run-off”. Gale is passionate about a little-understood but vital part of the insurance market.

“It matters enormously that that run-off is managed responsibly, and that the policyholders get what they need if they’ve got a claim. So it matters enormously to the insurer that their reputation is protected, but if they have a lot of their resource and capital tied up in stuff they did a few years ago, then it stops them serving the world today.”

Gale’s advice to youngsters coming into insurance – “listen, and be curious” – is certainly a worthwhile credo for anybody even looking at the industry.

Much of the work of the sector goes under the radar – but without it, not a lot that we take for granted can happen.

“Insurance helps to make the world tick. It helps you to have a mortgage, get in a car or get on a plane or go into an employer’s office because they’ve got the right liability insurance. If we accept all these things, and that the world is changing and the needs of the word are changing, then we have to be able to write new products.”

By freeing up the capital to do that, Gale and his legacy team play their part in keeping the insurance world ticking over – and, crucially, doing right by insurers’ clients.