London-based Carbon Underwriting Limited (Carbon) has announced the appointment of two new senior hires to expand its underwriting team, welcoming Howard Gras as head of financial lines and Alex Marshall as an underwriter focused on building out Carbon’s US property portfolio.
Gras has extensive experience as a professional indemnity (PI) and financial lines specialist, having previously served as PI class manager with CNA Hardy and commercial PI manager with Nexus Underwriting. Marshall, meanwhile, brings almost 14 years of experience as an underwriter at Canopius Group, focused on North American delegated authority business.
News of the appointments come as Carbon aims to further expand its team of experts focused on transforming the international coverholder market.
“The arrival of Howard and Alex adds to our exciting start to the year and I am delighted to welcome them to the Carbon family,” said Nick Tye, CEO at Carbon. “As a people business, we always look to attract highly experienced talent and these appointments add further to our fast-growing underwriting bench strength.”
“Carbon feels like the natural home for ambitious underwriting, and I am really pleased to be joining a business that has built such an outstanding reputation, great people, and a culture that is unique within the Lloyd’s market – all of which leads to a very exciting future,” added Gras.
Carbon recently became the first Lloyd’s syndicate-in-a-box to transition to full syndicate status, allowing the company to continue pursuing global coverholder business supported by additional classes.
“As we look to extend the breadth of our product offering and deliver on our plan to achieve top-quartile results for Syndicate 4747, our focus is to ensure that we have the right mix of skills and expertise across our business – as well as the cutting edge digital capabilities that our Graphene platform brings – to deliver differentiation, relevance and excellence to our clients and business partners,” said Tye.
