ACORD Solutions Group has appointed four new members to its board of directors, with Chubb senior vice president Spero Zacharias named as chair. The four incoming directors collectively cover the specific adoption channels ACORD needs to reach if ADEPT is to sustain its current growth trajectory: carrier technology, reinsurance broking, cloud infrastructure, and the independent agency channel. That deliberate channel coverage is the analytically significant observation about the board composition rather than simply the accumulation of diverse backgrounds.
The commercial context that makes the board expansion significant is specific. Activity on the ADEPT platform - the ACORD Data Exchange Platform and Translator, which facilitates digital exchange of placing, accounting, and claims data across the global re/insurance market - rose 73% from 2024 to 2025, a more than 300% increase since 2023. ASG has already launched regional data exchange hubs across London, North America, Bermuda, Dubai, Spain, Italy, and the Nordic markets, with a Singapore hub planned for the coming months. A board configured to open four distinct adoption channels simultaneously is the governance structure needed to sustain that growth rate beyond early adopters.
Zacharias brings the carrier channel. A returning chair and former vice-chair of the ACORD board, he brings more than three decades of insurance technology and cyber security experience and oversees a portfolio of cyber security programmes across 54 countries at Chubb - giving ACORD direct access to one of the global market's largest and most technically sophisticated carriers.
Nidhi Howell, chief business technology officer at Lockton Re, covers the reinsurance broking channel. With more than 20 years of technology and transformation experience including senior roles at Marsh, her appointment gives ACORD board-level representation from a major reinsurance broker actively managing technology and transformation across a global client base.
Christina Lucas, global market leader for insurance at Google Cloud, covers cloud infrastructure. Having held senior positions at AIG, Guidewire, and Envista Forensics, she leads Google Cloud's insurance strategy across the US, Europe, Asia, and Latin America - the cloud infrastructure partnership dimension that ADEPT's digital exchange growth will increasingly depend on at scale.
Kasey Connors, executive director of the Big I Agents Council for Technology, covers the independent agency channel. Her remit at ACT spans technology adoption, data quality, and responsible AI use across the independent insurance channel - the distribution segment where digital data exchange standardisation has historically been slowest to penetrate.
Chris Newman, president and CEO of ASG, said each director was selected for their track record in digital transformation and their distinct vantage point across the four channels. Zacharias said having worked with the ACORD community for many years, he had seen firsthand the power of digital, standardised data exchange. "ACORD Solutions Group is driven by that same spirit of industry collaboration, belief in maximising the value of data, and commitment to solving complex challenges," he said.
Returning board members include Newman, Nicole Kellenberger, global digital client engagement lead at Swiss Re, and Sabine VanderLinden, CEO of Alchemy Crew.
