Latest Senior Hires and Job Moves 17.03.2022

The latest job moves and senior hires for you;

SSP

After over 20 years with SSP, Peter Gregory, Director of Broking, has decided to leave to pursue a new challenge.

Peter has been with SSP for over 20 years and has been instrumental in growing our broker business and, in recent times, heading up our marketing function. Peter has been a fantastic ambassador for SSP throughout his time with the business and, while we are all sad to see him leave, we wish him luck in the next chapter of his career.

SSP has continued to revise its operational structure with separate divisions for broker and insure enabling greater visibility and quicker decision-making to benefit our customers.

ALESCO DA

Alesco Delegated Authority (Alesco DA), the specialist binding authority broker, today announces the appointment of Paul Compton as Operations Director. Paul will join the 50-strong team on Monday 4 April and report to Managing Director Donald Alcorn.

His appointment follows that of key strategic hire Simon Stovell who has joined Alesco DA as Executive Director, Americas, reporting to Elliot Warden, to build on the business’ already extensive footprint in North America, grow the current offering and develop new revenue streams.

An experienced operations director and financial controller, Paul brings over 35 years’ insurance industry experience and joins from specialist wholesale broker Xact Risk Solutions Ltd. Having spent his career in the Lloyd’s and London market, Paul has a successful track record in developing and delivering on operational strategy to support dynamic, growing businesses. Beginning his career in the insurance division of chartered accountants Pannell Kerr Forster (now PKF Littlejohn), he then spent 15 years at Lloyd’s broker Stafford Knight, latterly as divisional director. Senior financial and operations roles at Primary Group, Apex Insurance Services and Crispin Speers followed before his move to Xact.

HORWICH FARRELLY

Horwich Farrelly, the UK’s leading legal advisers to the insurance and commercial sectors, is furthering its transition from an insurance specialist to a full legal services firm with the announcement that their commercial team, created mid-pandemic in 2021, has now grown to 25 people and is looking to expand further having received a number of high-profile instructions from key national clients.

The fast-growing firm added to their new commercial offering with the appointment of former Knights plc partner and Office Leader, John Lord, and Mark Dennis to head the new commercial offering alongside fellow partners David White, Joanne Gardner-Boyes, Martin Price, Graeme Dixon and Richard Palmer.

The commercial arm has already included Dispute Resolution, Restructuring and Insolvency, Debt Recovery, Employment, Real Estate Litigation and Professional Indemnity in its service offering and is currently recruiting to achieve its full-service ambitions.

GEOSMART

A leading UK environmental consultancy has appointed a new director to head up a new division.

Phillip Martin is taking charge as managing director of GeoSmart Risk, which is a division of Shrewsbury-based GeoSmart Information that will focus on high-quality flood data and analytics for the insurance and finance markets.

GeoSmart Information, which was established in 2013, is a UK leader in producing proprietary flood data. The consultancy has a strong technical base and a successful flood and environmental reports business that is used by commercial enterprises and in millions of domestic conveyances.

In November it launched FloodSmart Analytics, a product that enables insurers, risk managers and mortgage lenders to accurately assess flood risk at even single building level. It provides high-definition analysis for flood depths, probabilities and the costs of flooding from river, coastal, surface water and groundwater sources, including climate change impacts.

BANK OF LONDON

The Bank of London, the next-generation technology company and the world’s first purpose-built global clearing, agency, and transaction bank,  announces the appointment of Vincent François as its Chief Audit Officer (CAO) and member of the bank’s Executive Management Committee. As CAO, François will be responsible for developing and managing The Bank of London’s risk-based internal audit programs, controls, and operations.

François has twenty plus years of experience in credit risk and audit roles across several leading EU and US banks. François joins The Bank of London from Société Générale, where he was Regional Group Chief Audit Executive and led the audit function across all Société Générale Group businesses. This covered investment banking, private banking, leasing, securities services and prime brokerage activities in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Channel Islands, Gibraltar, Middle East, and Turkey. In addition, Francois was the founder and executive sponsor of Société Générale’s UK Pride and Allies Network.

External to Société Générale, François is Chairperson of the Heads of Audit Forum at the Association for Foreign Banks and in January 2019, he became a member of the Society of Leadership Fellows of the St George House, Windsor Castle. Fluent in French, German and English, François has lectured at Caen University on corporate finance, derivatives, and internal bank controls.

ROKSTONE

Rokstone, the International Speciality (Re)Insurance MGA, part of the Aventum Group, has announced it has appointed Gavin Dollings to Chief Digital Underwriting Officer at Rokstone.

With a stellar career of more than 25 years in the industry, Gavin joins from Covea where he was Commercial Underwriting Director for the past six years, leading the Commercial underwriting team, driving underwriting strategy and transforming underwriting disciplines and bottom-line performance.  Prior to that he spent 10 years at Allianz firstly as Head of UK Casualty & Construction and later as its South East Regional Manager.

At Rokstone Gavin will lead the growing digital underwriting team as part of the Group’s multi-million pound investment in its digital transformation that was announced last year.  Gavin will have strategic and operational oversight of all business distributed through Rokstone’s digital platform, globally. The appointment follows soon after Rokstone announced the appointment of Jo Lambe earlier this month to Digital Product Development Manager.  Further appointments are expected in the coming months as Rokstone continues to grow and attract the best and brightest underwriting talent to its dedicated digital underwriting team.

EIS

EIS, a core and digital platform provider for insurers, recently announced digital pioneer Rory Yates as Head of Strategy for EMEA. The region is fast becoming a thriving market for EIS as it makes its second key senior hire in six months. Yates is set to help the company grow operations and go-to-market working in close collaboration with partners and clients.

Yates has a diverse background, with 24 years of experience across sectors such as technology and banking at industry heavyweights WPP, Cognizant and Santander. He joins EIS from DXC where he transformed client businesses with in-depth analytics & AI, consulting, UX & UI and digital engineering.

He has long been an industry trailblazer, leading the delivery of Cahoot, the UK’s second digital bank, into the UK at 22 years old. His interest in the insurance sector was solidified at Monitor Media, a pioneer in experience design within insurance, and then at Ninety, which helped the global insurance sector innovate to keep up with  the constantly evolving digital ecosystem.

NN GROUP

NN Group announces that its Supervisory Board has decided to nominate David Cole for reappointment as member of the Supervisory Board for another four years. If reappointed, the Supervisory Board intends to reappoint him as its chair. Furthermore, the Supervisory Board has decided to nominate Hans Schoen for reappointment as member of the Supervisory Board for another two years. If reappointed, the Supervisory Board intends to reappoint him as chair of the Audit Committee of the Supervisory Board.

The current terms of David Cole and Hans Schoen end at the close of the annual general meeting to be held on 19 May 2022 (‘2022 AGM’).

Additionally, the Supervisory Board has decided to nominate Pauline van der Meer Mohr as new member of the Supervisory Board for a term of four years, subject to approval of the Dutch Central Bank (‘DNB’). Pauline van der Meer Mohr (1960, Dutch) has extensive experience in international business and academia, having served as President of Erasmus University in the Netherlands from 2010 through 2015 after holding several senior leadership positions at companies including ABN AMRO, TNT and Shell.

She currently holds a number of board seats, including chair of the supervisory board of EY Netherlands, non-executive director of HSBC (until April 29, 2022), and member of the supervisory board of ASM International. She is also chair of the Dutch Corporate Governance Code Monitoring Committee.

Heijo Hauser and Clara Streit, members of the Supervisory Board since 2014 and 2017, respectively, will step down as per the close of the 2022 AGM. Heijo Hauser’s current term ends at the close of the 2022 AGM and he has indicated that he will not be available for reappointment. The current term of Clara Streit ends in 2024, but she has decided to step down early. Subject to approval of DNB, Cecilia Reyes will succeed Heijo Hauser as chair of the Risk Committee of the Supervisory Board.

WILLIS TOWERS WATSON

WTW (Willis Towers Watson, NASDAQ: WTW), a leading global advisory, broking and solutions company, has announced that it has appointed David Singh as Head of Climate Analytics and Exposure Management for its Insurance Consulting and Technology business. In his new role, Singh will be based in London and is to join the company in early March 2022.

Singh served as the Group Head of Exposure & Portfolio Management at global insurer MS Amlin, where he was responsible for the Group’s risk aggregation and reporting activities across all its legal entities. He most recently project managed the delivery of exposure, portfolio and underwriting performance solutions for natural and man-made catastrophe exposures in its European entity AISE. 

Prior to MS Amlin, Singh worked for Lloyd’s of London with senior responsibilities that included managing the Society’s catastrophe risk appetite, managing multiple regulatory filings to and from the market, and ensuring Managing Agents exceed Lloyd’s expectations and exposure management standards. During his time at Lloyd’s, he devised and implemented a number of catastrophe model validation concepts and Solvency II returns that are still used in the market today.

SEDGWICK

 Sedgwick, recently announced the strategic appointment of Laura Horrocks as head of fraud technology and intelligence for its UK-based investigation services division.