Miller has launched a dedicated Italian delegated authorities team, adding four hires from Besso, which is part of the Ardonagh Group, as the London market positions itself to service a wave of demand triggered by Italy’s new mandatory natural catastrophe insurance regime.
Dario Rebeschini joins as associate director to lead the team, alongside brokers Nick Kennedy and Arianna Schiavato, and account handler Adam Cater. All four join from Besso, and will work under Laurie Gaitskell, head of European delegated authorities at Miller. Gaitskell joined from Alesco Delegated Authority in April 2025 to build out the firm’s continental reach.
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Italy’s 2024 Budget Law made natural catastrophe insurance compulsory for businesses, with large companies required to comply from March 2025, with the deadline extended to October 2025 for medium-sized enterprises and January 2026 for small and micro-enterprises. By the end of 2025, the Italian National Association of Insurance Companies (ANIA) reported that roughly 15 per cent of Italy’s 4.5 million businesses had taken out cover. Still low, but more than double the pre-mandate level within a year.
That demand is increasingly running through London DA channels. Italy’s MGA market generated approximately €3.29 billion in gross written premium in 2025, ranking third in Europe behind the UK and Benelux, according to Howden Re’s second annual European MGA report published in May 2026. The natcat mandate has since widened the addressable base considerably for multi-line SME products of the kind the new Miller team will specialise in.
The Italian launch is the latest step in a structured geographic build at Miller’s DA division. The firm appointed Chris Hardcastle as head of delegated authorities in April 2022, hired a Canadian team from Tysers later that year, and in April 2025 brought in Gaitskell and two colleagues from Alesco to cover France, Switzerland and Monaco. Italy and broader Southern European expansion represent the next layer.
The new team will focus on open market and coverholder business, handling both short and long tail lines across Italian SMEs. That multi-line scope matters in Italy’s current regulatory climate, where businesses now need coverage across several perils simultaneously, and where coverholders capable of bundling that capacity efficiently are at a premium.
For reinsurers, the growth of the London coverholder market in Italy adds volume to the DA pipelines they already support. Moody’s Ratings noted in its September 2026 report on delegated underwriting that MGA premiums more than doubled between 2020 and 2024, with delegated authority now accounting for around 40% of Lloyd’s premium income. Insurers are likely to expand DA arrangements further as commercial markets soften, Moody’s added.
As Italian MGAs grow and consolidate, they tend to move toward fewer but deeper strategic reinsurance partnerships, a pattern the same Howden Re report identified across the European market, which means Italy’s expanding coverholder base translates directly into treaty and facultative volume for reinsurers seeking to deploy capacity in the region.
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