Swiss Re Corporate Solutions has appointed Jessica Villapañe (pictured) as customer and distribution manager in London, within the company's UK & Ireland operation. The appointment is the latest in a staffing build that began when Swiss Re CorSo restructured into country-level Market Units in June 2025, with Nina Arquint appointed chief executive officer for UK & Ireland with a brief to strengthen local client and broker partnerships and tailor solutions to market-specific needs. Twelve months into that restructure, the UK&I unit is still building its client management infrastructure - and the Villapañe hire signals where that investment is being directed.
The structure being built has a specific dual-track logic. Swiss Re CorSo is simultaneously investing in local country-level client management depth under Arquint's Market Unit and building a centralised group broker management practice, established in July 2026, coordinating broker engagement across its P&C, Corporate Solutions and Life & Health reinsurance segments. The two tracks are deliberately separate: local client management sits close to the corporate client relationships that define CorSo's commercial insurance proposition, while centralised broker management coordinates the intermediary channel at group level. In a softening market where maintaining underwriting discipline requires retaining profitable accounts and growing selectively rather than chasing volume, the quality of client management at country level is a direct underwriting input rather than a support function. Swiss Re Corporate Solutions posted a combined ratio of 86.5% in 2025 against a group target of under 91%, through a period of softening rates across several commercial lines - a result that depends on the client management capability now being built in markets like the UK.
Villapañe brings close to two decades of London Market experience, with roles on both the insurer and broker sides of the industry. She joins from Intact Insurance UK, where she served as strategic relationship manager of global network, managing international partnerships across multiple jurisdictions - directly relevant to a CorSo UK&I client management role serving multinational corporate clients. Before that, she spent more than four years as customer manager at RSA with portfolio responsibility for global clients across retention and new business development, and was previously a private client manager at Hiscox. Her earlier career includes five years at Willis Towers Watson in the leisure and hospitality practice placing cover for large multinational clients, followed by four years at Aviva across underwriting support, sales development and client relationship management. She holds a Diploma in Insurance from the Chartered Insurance Institute.
Cross-side experience - insurer at Intact, RSA, Hiscox and Aviva, broker at Willis Towers Watson - is specifically valuable in a customer management role rather than simply adding biographical depth. A customer manager who has sat on the broker side understands how brokers assess and present risk before it reaches the underwriter, which changes how they structure client relationships, anticipate placement decisions and identify the service gaps that cause account movement. Arquint has described UK and Ireland clients as seeking differentiated offerings in response to extreme weather events, AI-related exposures and supply chain pressures - a client need that requires exactly the kind of multi-perspective market knowledge the Villapañe career arc provides.
David Hayden-Case, head of customer management UK & Ireland at Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, said the appointment reflected the company's continued investment in its customer management team and its commitment to strengthening partnerships with customers and brokers in the UK and Ireland.
