Guy Carpenter, the reinsurance subsidiary of Marsh McLennan, has secured a High Court ruling in Singapore against two former brokers and rival intermediary LK Re over the loss of a major reinsurance client.
The American reinsurance broker alleged that senior vice president Celeste Choi Okmi and junior broker Dominic Lee Dong Yeol helped move business from Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance (SFMI) to LK Re, a Singapore-based reinsurance broker, and its parent LK Insurance Services in South Korea.
Guy Carpenter estimated that losing SFMI’s domestic warehouse risks account cost at least US$1.3 million in brokerage revenue.
The High Court found Choi, Lee, LK Insurance Services and LK Re liable for participating in a conspiracy using unlawful means to divert Guy Carpenter’s business to the new platform. Damages and legal costs will be assessed at a separate hearing.
Judicial Commissioner Mohamed Faizal accepted that clients may select their preferred broker but said that while this is “technically true,” the defendants’ argument “entirely misses the point.”
He wrote that employees must be “duty-bound to act in good faith to advance the interests of their current employers, rather than (as was the case here) quietly facilitating client migration in anticipation of profiting from future roles elsewhere.”
He added that this is “precisely why reasonable restraint of trade clauses exist: to prevent individuals from unfairly leveraging confidential knowledge, goodwill, or strategic relationships built in one role for the immediate benefit of another.” The judgment also stated that “loyalty, integrity and fair dealing are, and must be, at the core of any functioning business environment.”
Choi and Lee both joined Guy Carpenter in 2018 on the Korean desk, where Choi was Lee’s direct supervisor. Lee resigned in August 2021 and left in November, later signing with LK Insurance Services in November 2021 and LK Re in March 2022.
Choi resigned in November 2021, served a six-month notice until May 2022 and agreed in November 2021 to join LK Re as chief broking officer from May 16, 2022. LK Re, incorporated in Singapore in April 2021, was appointed by SFMI on Jan. 11, 2022, as reinsurance broker for its domestic warehouse risks in South Korea.
The Singapore ruling comes as other Marsh McLennan units pursue similar claims, including a lawsuit earlier this year by Marsh & McLennan Agency (MMA) against Granite Insurance and a former senior producer that alleges a coordinated attempt to “siphon off business and talent” during MMA’s acquisition of McGriff Insurance Services.
In that US case, MMA says the producer began contacting clients about his move while still employed, followed by a series of broker-of-record changes that shifted accounts to Granite.
Marsh has separately sued Aon over the near-simultaneous resignation of about 20 members of its surety team, alleging that a former practice head recruited by Aon led the departures and misused confidential information. Marsh contends that the exits amounted to a coordinated poaching effort that disrupted client relationships and undermined its own recruitment plans.
These disputes sit within what has been described as a “web of lawsuits” among Marsh, Aon and Howden in New York and London over alleged “unlawful recruitment raids” targeting specialist teams and books of business.
In this latest case, Guy Carpenter argued that Choi and Lee began working for LK interests before their formal start dates and that all four defendants coordinated to build a facility for SFMI’s domestic warehouse risks and persuade the insurer to place that business with LK Re.
The defendant, meanwhile, said SFMI’s decision reflected its own commercial priorities and maintained that their moves to LK Re were coincidental.
