MS Amlin expands its Risk function with a host of senior appointments
MS Amlin Underwriting Limited (MS AUL), the Lloyd’s global specialty (re)insurer, today announces the appointments of John Winder, Victoria Harding, Wendy Kriz, and Maurice Rose to its growing Risk function led by Chief Risk Officer, Vishal Desai.
John Winder joins as Senior Manager of the Insurance Risk pillar. He has more than twenty years’ experience as an underwriter and senior risk manager with substantial London market and reinsurance expertise, having worked at Hiscox, AXA XL, and Liberty Syndicates.
Victoria Harding will shortly begin her role as the Head of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). She brings more than ten years of risk management experience and was most recently at CNA Hardy, where she spent six years conducting strategic risk reviews, overseeing all aspects of the risk management framework and ORSA process. Prior to this, she held various risk management and operational roles at XL Catlin and Allianz UK, implementing risk and operational improvement programmes.
Wendy Kriz joins as Senior Manager of the function’s Validation and Risk Intelligence pillar. She has two decades of actuarial experience across reserving, capital, and validation work. Her experience spans consultancy and multiple in-house roles at firms including Barnett Waddingham Consultants, WTW, and Catlin Group. She has a deep interest in sustainability and is an active member of the Institute and Faculties of Actuaries (IFoA) Sustainability Board.
Maurice Rose joins as Senior Manager of the ERM pillar. He is an experienced insurance practitioner with over ten years’ experience and joins from PwC where he was a senior manager in its risk and regulatory insurance practice. Before PwC, he worked at the PRA and Lloyd’s and has strong market experience gained during his time at Torus and AIG. Maurice is an advocate for D&I in the insurance industry and chairs Link, the cross-insurance industry LGBTQ+ network.
Vishal Desai, Chief Risk Officer, MS AUL, said: “As we expand the remit of our Risk function offering in 2022 towards best-in-class, I am delighted to welcome John, Victoria, Wendy, and Maurice to the team. Their extensive and collective underwriting, actuarial and broader risk expertise will strengthen and contribute to the delivery of our strategic ambition. Investment in this top-tier talent reflects the value the business has come to place in the Risk function as a trusted source of insight, challenge and as a key partner to all material decision making. I am looking forward to working with such diverse senior talent to support MS Amlin as we continue to build out a successful underwriting business, delivering risk-sensitive, sustainable growth.”
DARAG senior appointments
DARAG Group (“DARAG” or “the Group”), announced several key senior appointments. These hires further broaden out the Group’s capabilities and support its continued progress towards becoming a highly focused, competitive and data driven legacy company with reach across Europe and North America.
The Group is delighted to announce the appointment of Alastair Lauder as Group Chief Actuary. Based in London, Lauder brings valuable and broad actuarial experience and leadership to DARAG. He most recently served as Syndicate Actuary at Arch (formerly Barbican) Managing Agency, where he led the reserving team and oversaw the capital modelling and pricing for Syndicate 1955. Prior to that, Lauder was at Lane Clark & Peacock where he worked on reserving for various London market clients focused on worldwide commercial casualty and medical malpractice. He is a particular advocate of using technology to make actuarial processes as efficient as possible and believes that more focus is needed on data quality within the insurance sector and the actuarial profession.
In addition, DARAG announces the appointment of Ciaran Russell as Senior Actuary in DARAG North America. Based in Bermuda, Russell worked most recently as an actuary at ILS Investment Management in Bermuda where he had direct experience with legacy transactions, having prior to this worked for 7 years at Aspen, performing roles including product and pricing actuary.
To assist with the growing importance of harnessing and streamlining data for the pricing and reserving process as well as to provide a wealth of valuable management information to monitor and improve portfolio performance, DARAG also welcomes Vivek Bhandari as Head of Data. Bhandari was most recently Data Warehouse Consultant at Siemens Financial Services and has deep data warehouse experience.
As a further sign of the investment in data, systems and technology, DARAG announces the appointment of Matt Watson as Group Head of IT. Watson was the former Group Head of IT at Armour Risk Management. He brings both technical and strategic experience to DARAG, including the management and delivery of IT infrastructure projects, cyber security and post-deal integration of systems.
Finally, Alastair Whitfield joins as Group Head of Investments. Whitfield will help manage the Group’s asset portfolios, which are primarily managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He joins DARAG from RBC Wealth Management where he was Head of Fixed Income, UK. Prior to that, Whitfield worked at Chubb Insurance as Portfolio Manager, co-managing the company’s multi-billion dollar international asset base. Whitfield will help ensure DARAG has a structured and well considered approach to asset allocation with a view to optimising risk and capital adjusted yields. The aim is to enhance the Group’s competitiveness and further control the risk of the Group’s growing asset base.
Tom Booth, Group CEO of DARAG, said: “As DARAG continues to expand globally, these senior hires reflect the successful growth and maturity of the Group as well as its ambition and innovation. These highly experienced and skilled staff will lead the continued development of our actuarial, data, IT and investment functions as we move beyond the initial scale up phase of the business.
This new talent will serve to enhance our competitiveness as well as cement our reputation as a wellresourced global legacy player with an enviable blend of industry experience and data led innovation.
DARAG now benefits from a significant balance sheet, ready access to growth capital and the ability to transact across key territories. We expect our full platform build out to be complete by year end, making the Group one of only a few legacy players able to provide the entire suite of solutions across Europe, North America and the UK. DARAG has built up a substantial, well diversified and medium tail portfolio since its recapitalisation three years ago, reinforced by strong risk metrics, underwriting discipline and expert claims management. Our future growth will be built upon those same foundations.
It is a testament to what the business has achieved in recent years, its controlled ambition and outlook in an attractive segment of the insurance market, that we have attracted such high calibre senior personnel to help continue the growth of DARAG into a highly respected and competitive midmarket legacy player.”