A major new Lloyd's insurer is in the pipeline with plans to focus on professional indemnity (PI), financial institutions and directors' and officers' cover with its own broker network.
Called SunRise, the company is the brainchild of former senior figures at specialist lines outfit SVB.
They are Rupert Villers, SVB's former chief executive and Philip Whittaker, its ex-finance director, who plan to recruit a team of underwriters.
Villers is in talks with capital providers and intends to raise between £100m and £150m, either from Bermuda or private equity finance.
He hopes to start business in April, subject to Lloyd's approval, and produce gross written income of £125m in the first year, increasing by 50% in the second year.
The two main classes of business would be insurance for financial institutions and PI.
Villers built his reputation on financial institutions business at SVB, which was known for writing primarily US business but recently refocused on UK business.
SunRise would also stay mainly on this side of the Atlantic, writing 50% of its business in the UK and just 20% in the US.
Its plans for PI include writing cover for solicitors and insurance brokers with some smaller liability risks.
Villers said: "We will be going out and listening very carefully to what our brokers need.
"If we can provide profitably what they need, we will do it."
He would adopt an approach of "responsible competition" with SVB rather than trying to poach its business.
A broker network is central to the SunRise plan.
It is likely to follow the pattern of SVB's highly successful Fusion operation, which works as a Lloyd's cover holder and service company, selling through more than 230 brokers nationwide.
Villers said: "I brought the Fusion team to SVB. We were lucky enough to find the right people to do it and it's been a huge success. Why wouldn't I do it again?"
