Howden appoints new chief commercial officer

Howden has appointed Elliot Richardson as group chief commercial officer, a newly created role designed to strengthen collaboration across its global insurance, reinsurance, underwriting and employee benefits businesses.

In his new role, Richardson will work closely with group chief financial officer Susan Panuccio and group chief operating officer David Shalders to align the strategy with Howden’s wider transformation.

Howden Markets, which leads the group’s relationships with its global carrier partners, together with group placement, will report into Richardson. 

Richardson has 38 years of experience in the (re)insurance market and joined Howden in 2015 as part of the RKH acquisition.

During his tenure he has held roles including vice chair and chair of international, Howden Re, scaled Howden Re’s international footprint through new talent and played a key role in Howden’s acquisition of Tiger Risk.

He said: “Howden has assembled the most talented group of people in the industry and we now belong in a small group of truly global brokers.

”It is therefore a logical next step for us to now harness our collective power and bring the full force of all our experts, regardless of specialism or geography, for the benefit of our clients and markets.

”The scale of opportunity through a combined commercial strategy is huge I am honoured to be asked to take on this role and in having the support across the group to do so.”

New strategy

The appointment forms a key part of a new commercial strategy aimed at bringing together the full breadth of Howden’s capabilities to better serve clients while deepening relationships with insurer partners.

Under the strategy, Howden plans to increase collaboration across its global operations, expand the use of facilities and specialist products and make greater use of client and placement data through enhanced CRM systems and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions.

Howden said: “We have now built the full range of geographies and capabilities to become a truly global broker and the opportunity in front of us is to deploy all of those tools for our clients. That means building a more consistent, scalable, world-class business – one that helps our people collaborate more easily, delivers better outcomes for clients and markets, and unlocks the full potential of the group, while preserving the entrepreneurial, empowered and employee-owned culture that makes us different.

”Our new commercial strategy, and Richardson’s leadership of it, is central to that. He has played a vital role in building Howden Re into one of the world’s leading reinsurance businesses and I know he will bring the same energy, judgement and commercial instinct to this role.”