The Bold Decision That Changed Everything
By Andy Wright
I will never forget the day - I flew to London, sat in a meeting room with my manager on a Tuesday afternoon. I hadn't rehearsed, I didn't have any notes. It was just me, and the words which had been running through my mind for months: "I'm done. I'm out."
I was the MD of an insurtech. I had what people thought was a dream role. Good salary, influence, and interesting work solving complex problems. But I was stuck on a hamster wheel spinning faster than I could keep up. The weekly business trips, working 70 hours per week, took its toll. Everything blurred into an exhausting grind that left no time for what mattered most - life with my husband and our French bulldog.
The breaking point wasn't dramatic. No toxic incident. I woke up one day and realised I had delivered what I set out to deliver, three years early. Now was the time to stop. I was tired of missing out on quality time with my husband. Physically present, mentally trapped in boardrooms, committee meetings and constant Zoom calls.
What scared me most wasn't leaving. It was the realisation that if I didn't change, I'd wake up at 60 having built a business for someone else whilst my own life passed me by. I'd spent over 25 years climbing the insurance ladder - from a call centre taking 70 calls per hour, to living in major cities across Europe and the C-suite. I'd earnt my stripes, but for what? So I could spend another decade too busy to enjoy it?
The risk was real: walking away from guaranteed salary with no plan, no safety net, no job. Financial advisers would call it reckless. My parents thought I'd lost the plot. But here's what I learned: the bigger risk was staying on a path slowly suffocating who I actually wanted to be.
The pivotal moment came two weeks after I said I wanted to leave. My husband and I were talking about "what next". That's when I had clarity. I'd spent years solving difficult, often insurmountable problems - regulatory approvals, designing unique insurance products, building insurance operations from scratch. Those skills weren't evaporating because I'd left full-time work. The difference now was I could choose who I work with, and on what terms.
That's when Resnova was born. Not from a business school case study, but from finally having headspace to ask: what problems do I actually want to solve, and who do I want to solve them for? Turns out, plenty of insurtechs need help. Car manufacturers and international insurers need someone who can navigate regulatory frameworks without corporate theatre. Someone who shows up to meetings with regulators in trainers, focused on substance rather than performance.
Do I miss the guaranteed income? The security? Of course. I only have finite savings. But here's the other side. One month into my consulting business, I've secured one long-term contract, I'm about to sign another, with a pipeline of eight other opportunities. But here's the special part - I get to go for coffee in our local village with my husband whenever we want. We take our dog to the beach every day. I'm not sitting in an airport departure lounge every week. This is what matters most.
The bold move that paid off wasn't having a perfect plan. It was giving myself permission to bet on myself, even when that bet looked irrational from the outside. Sometimes you don't need to know exactly
where you're going. You just need to know you can't stay where you are.
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