Personal lines chief Steve Hardy picks his top team

AXA has confirmed the management structure for its new personal lines operation.

The team leading the personal lines business, which now incorporates all AXA’s intermediated, partnerships and direct businesses, including Swiftcover, will be:

Mike Keating - managing director, intermediary and partner sales. Keating’s team will be responsible for managing sales and relationships across the intermediary and corporate partner channels.

Craig Staniland - managing director, product. Underwriting teams from personal lines intermediary, corporate partnerships and AXA direct and Swiftcover will report to Staniland. They will be responsible for the pricing of all personal lines products as well as reinsurance and customer retention.

Tony Peppard - managing director, claims. Peppard’s team will be responsible for all personal claims, personal large loss and business services. The new team incorporates household, lifestyle and personal motor for both the AXA and SIMS operations.

Richard Coombe - managing director, direct sales. A new team will be formed to manage the sales of the direct motor, home, travel and ancilliary products, bringing together the teams that currently work on e-commerce, aggregator and commercial direct.

Dave Fretter - managing director, customer service. Fretter will be responsible for running AXA’s customer contact centres and looking after all activities which support AXA’s direct customers, corporate partners and brokers.

Elsewhere, Waseem Malik becomes finance director of the new company; Tina Shortle will be marketing director and Rod Alderton is appointed IT director.

AXA personal lines chief executive Steve Hardy said: “We have made excellent progress since we began our strategic review of the personal lines business in October.

"Our new structure will provide much greater focus on the customer and result in us being better placed to respond to market challenges as well as distributor and customer needs. I am confident we now have the right structure and the right people in place to deliver our ambitions for this new business.

AXA said its commercial lines business, to be led by the recently appointed Amanda Blanc, will announce its structure once she joins early next year.

AXA Ireland chief executive John O’Neil will continue to oversee the business for the time being.