Arch Insurance Australia has appointed Dave Ha (pictured) as senior executive assurance underwriter, tasked with growing the insurer's Southern Region portfolio across directors and officers, management liability, and related financial lines.
Ha will work across Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia from a Melbourne base, reporting to Mark Cocks, executive assurance underwriting manager for the Southern Region. He joins Arch effective immediately, covering D&O, management liability, employment practices liability, statutory liability, crime and associations liability lines for mid-market and corporate clients.
"We're delighted to welcome Dave to our executive assurance team," Cocks said. "As we continue to grow our presence and expand our capabilities across the Southern Region, Dave's depth of experience, technical expertise and proactive approach to broker engagement will be invaluable."
Ha joins from DUAL, where he was most recently a senior underwriter. Before DUAL, he held financial lines and liability underwriting roles at Allianz and QBE, and earlier at Meritz. A ZoomInfo profile - a third-party data aggregator - separately lists a senior underwriter posting at QBE covering financial lines and casualty for corporate accounts, a financial lines senior underwriter role at Allianz, and a bachelor's degree from the University of Auckland. As with all third-party aggregated data, these details have not been independently verified by Arch's announcement.
Ha's move from DUAL to Arch's Southern Region executive assurance team follows a similar path taken by Katrina Palmer in 2023, who also joined Arch as a senior underwriter for executive assurance in the Southern Region after working at Dual. Arch also added Arion Reuter to its Southern Region professional indemnity team earlier in 2026, another underwriting hire in the same region.
The hire comes as Australia's directors and officers market has delivered premium reductions of 15% to 40% through 2025. A July 2026 market update from Bellrock Advisory found the management liability segment remains stable with rate reductions of 5% to 10% still common, even as claims rise across sectors including workplace safety investigations, insolvent trading allegations and employment practices matters.
Bellrock has separately flagged D&O as among the lines most likely to harden first, pointing to rising shareholder derivative actions and a forecast rise in personal insolvencies - which the Australian Financial Security Authority projected would reach approximately 13,400 in 2024-25 - as potential catalysts.
Arch's own product range in the Southern Region has also been shifting. The insurer recently listed its Management Liability Plus product on Ebix's Sunrise Exchange, taking an affirmative cyber cover position at a time when much of the Australian management liability market has been limiting or excluding cyber-related exposures in standard wordings - a stance directly relevant to the book Ha will now help underwrite.
Howden's 2026 D&O Outlook points to rising global claims activity, driven in part by AI-related litigation and cyber exposures, even as pricing has continued to soften. Arch made a comparable appointment in its Northern Region in June, naming Fariha Neda as underwriting manager for New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT within Arch's broader executive assurance business.
