MGA pens agreement to promote for head of cyber

MGA Pen Underwriting has promoted Ian Summerfield to the role of head of cyber, effective from 1 January 2024.

The appointment will see Summerfield take on the strategic and operational leadership of the MGA’s cyber practice.

He succeeds Hamir Patel, who served as head of cyber at Pen since May 2020 having  joined the MGA in 2016 as reserving and accumulation control manager. 

Pen Underwriting’s managing director of international Adrian Scott said the appointee “will be taking up the reins of a fantastic team and cyber portfolio in great shape, primed for further expansion”.

He added: “Cyber represents a huge growth opportunity for Pen’s International division, with clients spread across key territories around the world.

”[Summerfield’s] appointment is another great example of our ability to match the ambition of our business with the ambition of our talent.” 

Gift of ‘opportunity’

Summerfield brings more than 15 years of insurance experience to the role and currently serves as commercial director of Pen’s hazardous good and environmental industries niche within its speciality division.

He joined the business in April 2020 after spending over 11 years at insurer RSA, where he worked his way up the ranks from underwriter to regional manager for commercial.

Scott said Summerfield’s “impressive leadership and business development credentials, track record in successful portfolio performance and real passion for motivating teams to win through collaboration and customer excellence” made him Patel’s “ideal successor”.

Summerfield said: “Cyber continues to be one of the insurance industry’s fastest growing and most rapidly evolving areas of risk and exposure – that brings equal amounts of opportunity and challenge for an underwriting business focused on portfolio performance and it’s a challenge I’m excited to take on.

“Brokers look to Pen’s cyber practice for access to both technical underwriting expertise and fast, flexible digitally enabled solutions. Colleagues look to it too, as an invaluable source of complementary cover for their clients – cover that [can] close a protection gap that rising digital exposures seek to widen.”