Willis Re has named Neil Eckert (pictured) as chief executive officer. The appointment lands three weeks after Willis Re acquired BMS Re's US operations and on the same day Conduit Re named Eckert's successor. He will join upon completion of his contractual obligations at Conduit, where he steps down on March 1, 2027. Eckert will be the first global chief executive of the relaunched venture, which has operated since late 2024 under the board leadership of Lucy Clarke without a named global CEO.
Eckert co-founded Conduit Re in 2020 and has led it as CEO since May 2025. The move back to broking closes a loop in a career that has rarely stayed on one side of the market. He began as a reinsurance broker at Benfield Group before co-founding Brit Insurance Holdings. From there, his career crossed into carbon trading, environmental derivatives, and insurtech before Conduit. That breadth is directly relevant to the broker Willis Re is trying to build.
Willis Re was relaunched in late 2024 as a joint venture between WTW and Bain Capital. WTW had sold its original reinsurance arm to Arthur J. Gallagher for US$3.25 billion in 2021.
Growth since relaunch has been built primarily on talent. The broker drew approximately 80 professionals from Guy Carpenter between mid-2025 and mid-2026. That campaign produced a UK High Court judgment in February finding that two former Guy Carpenter executives had improperly assisted the hiring push.
The BMS Re US acquisition in August added six offices and an established regional client base. It also restored a capital markets capability Willis Re had not held since 2021.
"His career is grounded in the reinsurance industry, but also spans insurance broking, capital, technology and climate ventures, as well as founding and scaling businesses across public markets and private ventures," Clarke said.
After Benfield, Eckert co-founded Brit Insurance Holdings to raise capital for Lloyd's and insurance-company underwriting capacity. He then co-founded Climate Exchange plc, a carbon-emissions trading platform, in 2005 and served as CEO until its sale in 2010. He currently chairs IncubEx, a Chicago-based environmental derivatives platform.
The top four reinsurance brokers hold more than 85% of the global market. Willis Re's strategy since relaunch has been to compete on specialisation and capital market connectivity rather than scale alone. A CEO whose career spans both sides of that equation fits what the broker has said it wants to be.
"Having spent my career on both the broking and capital sides of this industry, I understand what clients and markets need from a broker: technical excellence, capital insight, and the imagination to apply technology to genuinely improve outcomes," Eckert said.
