Lee Mooney: New UK boss gearing up to ‘change the pace’ at Markel

After a little over 26 years rising up the ranks at insurer RSA, many across the UK general insurance market speculated what could be next for Lee Mooney, RSA’s former UK commercial managing director, when he headed into the garden in May 2024.

Although staring down the barrel of a long stint away from the working world was a daunting prospect for a man who had “never taken more than two weeks off in my entire career”, Mooney tells Insurance Times that he spent his 15 months outside of the Square Mile carefully considering his “personal career and development” after reaching a pivotal crossroads in his former role.

Mooney very much saw RSA’s acquisition of commercial insurer NIG in September 2023 and its disposal of its personal lines book to Admiral Group a few months later in December as a real “opportunity to just look at myself, look at my career and look at what I wanted next”.

For him, RSA was entering a distinctive “period of change”, where it “was transforming” in line with the ambitions of parent company Intact Financial Corporation.

Rather than seeking to squeeze into “the new fit of RSA”, Mooney explains that he “wanted to try something new” with his next position.

And, despite entertaining conversations with the broking side of the fence while on garden leave, Mooney stuck to his underwriting guns when he re-entered the workforce in June 2025, confirming that he would be succeeding Neil Galjaard as UK managing director at specialty insurer Markel.

As part of this remit, he now oversees the gamut of Markel’s UK-based activities, including sales and development, partnerships with MGAs and scheme brokers, Markel’s in-house tax advisory arm and legal practice, marketing, digital trading and its Manchester-based direct to consumer division.

In his first exclusive interview since joining Markel UK, Mooney tells Insurance Times that a conversation with Markel Group chief executive Simon Wilson was really the tipping point that saw him sign on the dotted line for the new job.

He says: “I was just blown away with [Wilson’s] entrepreneurial drive, his ambition for the business, how he wants to take Markel to be more relevant and on the map.

“If you look at the global footprint of Markel, it’s a fantastic business. We’ve got so much diversification of products, so much diversification of team and geography.

“It was a no brainer in respect of joining. The skill set that I [have] from a UK commercial market perspective with the backdrop of experience we’ve got here at Markel is a perfect synergy.”

UK is not pulling its weight

Despite Mooney’s enthusiasm and buy in for his new professional abode, he is keen to supercharge the insurer’s Ambition 2030 strategy in the UK.

Ambition 2030 is Markel UK’s five-year, five pillar plan that launched in March 2025. It is designed to pull on levers such as eTrading and schemes to boost the insurer’s business in this country, supporting Markel Group to reach its global target of improving gross written premium from $2.5bn (£1.9bn) to $5bn (£3.8bn) in the years to 2030.

Mooney wholeheartedly agrees with the Ambition 2030 approach. He says: “You look at the UK [and] we are underweight [compared to the wider Markel Group]. We are not as relevant as we want or need to be for our customers and brokers.”

With fresh eyes on the Ambition 2030 road map, Mooney has identified two key areas that need to be accelerated “at pace” if Markel’s UK business is to achieve its goals.

Products and people

Firstly, he wants to pull on the global Markel Group and the UK’s wholesale division to rapidly bolster Markel UK’s specialist product set, whether these products are eTraded or finalised via an underwriter conversation – ultimately, he feels a larger product suite will help increase the insurer’s “share of wallet” in the competitive SME market and mid-market arenas.

He explains: “What do we do in Europe? What do we do in Canada? What do we do in the States? What works well, what doesn’t and what can we use in the UK rather than reinvent the wheel?

“We’ve got a business that really collaborates and really wants to share, which is great because we do lots of great things in lots of great countries. It’s just a case of let’s not reinvent it. Let’s just see what’s relevant here.”

As an example of this type of activity, Markel UK launched its contractors’ combined product onto software house Acturis in August 2025 – and Mooney confirms that the insurer’s new product pipeline for this year also includes the introduction of charities combined, management liability and life sciences propositions to its overall book.

He adds that Markel UK is also planning to launch an eTraded cyber product in 2026, borrowing existing expertise from Markel’s wholesale division.

“At the moment, we’re only relevant to certain brokers on certain products – we need to expand that and put more products on the shelf,” Mooney emphasises.

“We’ve got a very robust product map that we’ll be deploying over the next 12 months to increase our footprint across the product shelf.

“Let’s make sure we can increase our relevance with our brokers, increase [those touch points]. And by increasing our touch points with our brokers and being more relevant with them, we can bring our specialty line solutions to the table – and that’s where the stickiness happens, that’s where the magic stays, where we can get first class retention because we’re providing that service.”

The second area where Mooney wants to put his foot on the gas is the recruitment of talent, primarily in support of these new product lines with the appointment of “product leaders”, alongside hiring further sales and distribution staff too.

He tells Insurance Times that the business is currently planning the granular details of this people pipeline, but confirms that there is “going to be a significant investment in people” within Markel UK, which currently has 215 employees.

Mooney continues: “I’m exceptionally driven that we need to do things at pace.

“My leadership style is exceptionally driven [and] very approachable, but I just want us to win. I want us to be the best in the market – which we are in certain areas now, but we continually need to stress test and challenge ourselves to increase that point of relevance.

“Every broker I’m speaking to at the moment, the door is wide open for Markel to be there, but we just need to increase that product set, increase our touch points and make sure that we can push ourselves and push the boundaries in which we currently operate.”

Being ‘absolutely first class’

Although it remains to be seen whether Mooney can fully bring to life his ambitions for Markel UK, he certainly appears to be a safe pair of hands, with 25 years and counting specifically dedicated to building and developing broker-insurer relationships – a far cry from his first roles in the world of work, which include call centre operative and sound engineer. He “fell” into insurance in 1999.

For him, a successful broker and insurer collaboration is based on “a strong relationship” with “no surprises”, where honest “conversations of truth” are the norm.

Mooney continues: “Sometimes, it’s not a positive conversation [an insurer needs to have with a broker] because you might need to put rate through. You might need to say ‘we can no longer provide cover for a particular client’.

“But making sure you do [this] in a prominent, proactive way [ensures that], from a relationship perspective, you leave [the] conversation intact and you build on that relationship all the time.”

Around 70% of Markel UK’s business is transacted via brokers. Mulling over how he would describe Markel UK’s service for broker partners in three words, Mooney sums it up with: “Absolutely first class.”