Broker
RK Harrison
RK Harrison has appointed Richard Storey as a divisional director of its UK commercial division, responsible for new business development.
Storey has over 25 years' experience in the insurance industry. He previously held managerial roles within HSBC Insurance Brokers.
Heath Lambert
Graeme Merry has joined Heath Lambert Group as environmental specialist in the projects division.
Merry has 15 years experience in environmental insurance, consulting and environmental risk.
He will help develop relationships with both existing and prospective contacts in the waste sector and will advise clients with contaminated property sites.
Mark Woods has been recruited by the transport division of Heath Lambert Group as an account manager. Woods will be responsible for the division's clients, which include Addison Lee, Translink and TDG. He joins from Aon.
TH March
TH March has announced details of four new appointments.
Paul Percy has joined the commercial account handling team. He has 25 years' experience in insurance and is a previous winner of the John Poel Prize.
Jerry Knight joins as account executive and has 20 years' broking experience in the West Country.
Richard Stevens, who has extensive insurer and local broking experience, also joins as an account executive.
Mark Evans brings 25 years' experience of the insurance sector to the account executive team. Evans specialises in the construction industry.
Oval
Oval has appointed Steven Howell as new business director.
Howell will be responsible for developing a new business strategy for the mid-corporate sector and will roll this out across the UK.
He will also develop Oval's product and service offering for mid-corporate clients, such as schemes for trade associations and industry groups.
Howell was formerly new business director at Close Premium Finance.
Cass-Stephens
Cass-Stephens has appointed Simon Storrie as a director, with responsibility for business development across all areas of the firm.
Storrie joined Cass-Stephens in 2003 after 23 years with Ecclesiastical Insurance, first as an underwriter and then as an account manager.
Omega
Omega Insurance Holdings has appointed Penelope James as group finance director.
She joins from Zurich Financial Services where she was chief financial officer of the UK general insurance division.
James will take up her new role in May 2007.
Select & Protect
Select & Protect has appointed Mike Love as new business development manager.
Love was previously with Fortress Underwriting Agencies as business development manager.
JKB
JK Buckenham, the reinsurance broking platform of the Hyperion Insurance Group has appointed Ian Smith as director, reinsurance.
Smith has experience of the London and international markets in a reinsurance career of almost 30 years.
He joins from BMS International.
Drakefield Insurance
Drakefield Insurance Services has appointed Ian Jennings corporate sales manager.
Jennings will work with Andy Taylor, who was recently appointed to the board of Drakefield Group.
Insurer
Brit Insurance
Brit Insurance has appointed Nigel Bennett chief investment officer, Neil Sharman head of group tax and Simon England regional development underwriter for the North East region.
Bennett has worked for Brit Insurance as consultant from 2004 and became group treasurer in 2005.
He has 20 years' experience in financial markets with Royal Bank of Scotland, ABN Amro and specialist risk management operations.
Sharman is a chartered accountant and tax adviser with over 20 years' tax experience.
He was previously head of tax at a mid-sized firm of chartered accountants.
England joins Brit after seven years at Chubb, where he was most recently manager of the financial lines division.
His responsibilities will be to continue his focus on core expertise in financial lines underwriting, while assisting regional manager, David Kelly in implementing development plans for the North East region.
ascot
Ascot Underwriting has appointed Diarmuid Brennan to the new position of syndicate general manager and Michael Bullock as business development manager.
Brennan has extensive experience as a specialist lawyer in the insurance and reinsurance industry working both at his own niche legal/insurance consultancy and also for major organisations, including Sedgwick and City law firms Lovells and Denton Wilde Sapte.
His responsibilities will be to provide in-house expertise to assist with the manuscripting of policy wording for new clients. He will also review large or complex claims.
Bullock joins to help identify business opportunities and assist the overall development of the syndicate.
He has worked 22 years in the insurance industry, with extensive experience in broking property, casualty, political and financial risks and reinsurances.
Bennetts
Bennetts has appointed Mark Attwell to head up its e-commerce division.
Attwell is responsible for driving Bennetts' e-commerce channel forward through bennetts.co.uk.
Attwell has spent the last year as head of e-commerce at Thomas Cook Signature.
Beazley
Clive Washbourn has been appointed executive director of the Beazley Group.
Washbourn, who has over 24 years' experience in the marine insurance industry, joined the company in 1998 to lead Beazley's marine team.
Peter Jenkins and Marc Werblow have been recruited to the political risks underwriting team of the Beazley Group.
Jenkins brings a wealth of political risk underwriting experience, having spent the past eight years working for AIG's global trade and political risks team in both New York and London.
Werblow has extensive experience in the banking sector, focusing on commodity and structured finance risk since 1990 for Fortis Bank, WestLB and, most recently for The Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi (UFJ Bank).
Oak
Oak Underwriting has appointed Matthew Ward as business development manager in the south.
He will be responsible for building relationships with brokers.
Ward joins Oak from Aon where he was sales manager for the Aon private client division. He was also a member of the APC Executive.
Liverpool Victoria Liverpool Victoria has appointed Richard Rowney to the new role of group chief operating officer, effective from 20 February 2007.
He will be responsible for marketing, IT, HR, corporate governance, strategy and change.
Rowney joins from Barclays where he held a number of senior positions, most recently as programme director of the Woolwich integration.
IGI
IGI Group has appointed Richard Fell as a technical underwriter, focusing on commercial packages.
Fell joins from AXA, where he was a commercial underwriter dealing with liability, property and transit insurance.
He will be based in IGI's Nottingham office. He joins from Aon where he had responsibility for handling general commercial insurance.
Equity Red Star
Equity Red Star has established a new sales team, charged with developing a strong regional presence for the insurer.
The five strong team will work closely with brokers to help them grow profitable accounts with Equity.
Agency manager Ian Smedley was recently appointed from Allianz Cornhill.
He is joined by Andy Chapman, responsible for the North, Chris Hibbett, looking after the Midlands, Madeleine Gee in Scotland, Nigel Rawlings in the West and Chris Christou taking care of the South.
Allianz Cornhill Schemes
Allianz Cornhill Schemes has appointed Mark Saunders as the new manager of its call centre, based at Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Saunders will focus on the customer service experience and staff development.
He was previously with Direct Line in Croydon, managing a motor insurance call centre.
Congregational & General
Congregational & General, specialists in insuring church buildings, has appointed David Collett as chairman of the board.
Mondial UK
Mondial UK has appointed Rona Parry as business development manager.
Parry joins from RAC, where she helped develop affinity relationships with banks, building societies, clubs, supermarkets and unions.
Joining Mondial's corporate and travel division, Parry will be the account manager responsible for the easyJet travel insurance account, overseeing implementation responsibilities.
Zenith Services
Zenith Services has appointed Andrew Bennett general manager of development, marketing & agency.
Bennett will lead the development and implementation of business development and marketing strategies.
He will work closely with individual product heads and the regional sales team as well as managing relationships with key clients.
Bennett joins from Budget Insurance Group where he was senior manager of group business development.
Arista
Arista has announced further details of its Bristol office, which was opened in November under the leadership of south-west regional manager David Aslin.
Aslin is joined by senior underwriters Sonya Hawkins, Gareth Hodgins and Spencer Flood who will concentrate on developing business across the South West and South Wales.
The Bristol office also comprises underwriter Gavin Taylor and regional fleet underwriter Julie Collins.
CNA Insurance
CNA has appointed John Taylor to the London team as UK/Ireland commercial manager - financial lines.
Taylor joins CNA from Chubb, where he undertook a variety of roles including UK & Ireland manager - financial institutions and directors' & officers' product manager for UK & Ireland.
Taylor will be managing the growth of CNA's commercial financial lines business across the UK and Ireland, expanding their product offering and developing the financial lines relationships with London and regional brokers.
Michelle May has been appointed claims technical specialist with CNA.
May brings considerable experience to the claims team as well as specialised knowledge in the complex area of directors' & officers', financial institutions and professional indemnity.
M/PI
Media/Professional Insurance (M/PI) has appointed Dominic Ward as director of claims.
Ward is a defamation and media litigation specialist who previously worked for Finers Stephens Innocent before setting up his own media law practice in September 2005.
He has experience in all aspects of contentious media law, including intellectual property disputes, reporting restrictions and prepublication advice.
Legal
Elborne Mitchell
Ed Stanley has joined specialist insurance and marine law firm Elborne Mitchell as a partner working in the reinsurance division.
He moves from Barlow Lyde & Gilbert, where he was also a partner.
The move marks a return for Stanley, who was a partner at Elborne until 1998.
Other
Deloitte & Touche
Deloitte & Touche has hired Mark Adams as a new partner in its UK insurance industry team.
Adams, who has over 17 years' experience in advising insurers, having worked in both Bermuda and London, joins from Ernst & Young.
Adams specialises in insurance restructuring and run-off and has worked as both an external and internal adviser in the industry.
Audatex UK
Audatex UK has announced the appointment of Greg Shea to the position of continuous improvement manager.
Shea will be responsible for driving business improvement methodologies to improve Audatex processes - both internally and when developing solutions for its customers. He will particularly focus on process improvement techniques such as Six Sigma and Lean.
He joins from McKinsey & Company, where he practiced as a Six Sigma black belt (a business improvement training course)
Prior to this Shea spent over four years as a diagnostic engineer with Ford Motor Company.
uSwitch.com
Independent comparison and switching service uSwitch.com has appointed Aron Thompson to be a product manager in the personal finance team.
He will develop new and existing commercial relationships with suppliers and work closely with uSwitch.com's sales and marketing team to raise awareness of industry issues and ensure good levels of traffic and conversions are delivered to providers.
The role involves managing a team of analysts and reporting to head of personal finance, Nick White.
Thompson brings six years of online marketing experience, most recently as marketing manager at Insurancewide.com where he developed strategies for partner, direct and online marketing including search engine marketing.
Crawford & Company
Crawford & Company UK has appointed Mark Perkins technical manager in its casualty division based at the company's Ipswich office.
He will be responsible for the technical management and development of personnel as well as being a member of Crawford Casualty's complex and major loss team for the south east of England.
Perkins has 28 years experience in insurance and joins from Teceris (Capita), where he held a senior technical position.
Crawford & Company UK has appointed a new member of the ARIEL (Agricultural, Rural Industries and Estate Losses) team for the south west of England.
Jane Eastham will be based at the company's Bristol office handling agricultural, rural industries, equine, country houses and estate claims.
Eastham has particular expertise in agricultural feed manufacture, arable, grain storage, poultry, ruminants, livestock and equestrian claims.
She joins Crawford from ABNA Agricultural, where she was a safety and environment manager.
