Acrisure UK has appointed Lou Brown as head of risk management, tasked with building the group's new Acrisure Risk Management Services division and establishing a coordinated approach to risk management across its broking, claims and advisory teams.
Brown brings more than a decade of experience across claims, risk engineering and strategic risk consultancy, including over four years at Marsh McLennan.
The appointment marks a significant investment by Acrisure UK in a more proactive, advisory-led service model. The new division will focus on operational risk areas including people and liability risk, property, motor, claims defensibility and strategic risk, with the aim of reducing clients' total cost of risk and improving claims performance.
Brown described the appointment as a rare opportunity to build a function from the ground up, with the ambition of moving Acrisure away from transactional insurance towards a more strategic, collaborative approach.
By combining claims insight with practical risk management, Brown said the goal was to help clients not just insure risk but reduce it.
The division will also support clients on compliance and governance, helping organisations identify and mitigate risks to their assets and reputation while informing decisions on loss prevention and regulatory requirements.
Brown will be supported by a growing team of specialists, working alongside regional delivery teams and partnerships with specialist providers to broaden the division's reach.
With more than 25 years' experience in health and safety risk management, much of it within insurance, Simmonds has worked with insurers, brokers and clients to identify and mitigate risk and reduce claims exposure through stronger health and safety controls. His sector experience spans construction, manufacturing, care, education, agriculture, motor and housing.
The appointments follow a period of rapid expansion for Acrisure in the UK. The group completed rebrands of heritage brokers Russell Scanlan and WH&R McCartney in January, bringing them under the unified Acrisure name, and added four further businesses, including managing general agent Confidas, to its UK broking platform in April.
The build-out of a dedicated risk management arm also lands amid a wider industry debate about what UK broker consolidation is actually delivering.
At the British Insurance Brokers' Association conference in June, Lockton partner Matt Davies was among senior figures who questioned whether the wave of private equity-backed acquisitions reshaping the UK broking market is building genuinely stronger businesses or simply deploying available capital at scale.
Whether Acrisure's investment in advisory capability, rather than acquisition alone, resolves that debate remains to be seen, but it marks a distinct strategic choice from the acquisition-led growth that has otherwise defined the group's recent UK expansion.
That question is sharpened by continued pressure on claims costs. EY has forecast a return to underwriting losses in UK motor insurance in 2026, with the net combined ratio expected to rise from 97% in 2024 to 111%, as rising repair costs, labour rates and material prices push up claims across property and casualty lines.
Against that backdrop, services aimed at reducing claims frequency and severity, rather than simply placing cover, are becoming a more prominent part of brokers' value propositions.
Sally Swann, director of corporate development & risk management at Acrisure UK, said Brown's appointment to head the new division was an important part of the group's risk management growth strategy.
She said the team would provide services addressing strategic, operational, financial and compliance-related challenges, adding to the experience Acrisure can offer as it builds its reputation in risk management.
Swann added that the initiative was about creating a more integrated proposition that supports clients in managing risk more effectively while strengthening Acrisure's relationships with insurers.
For a broking group that has grown substantially through acquisition over the past two years, the launch of a dedicated risk management division marks a test of whether advisory depth, rather than scale alone, can differentiate a consolidator in a market where claims costs across construction, motor and casualty lines continue to climb.
