Chubb has appointed two new leaders to its digital business organisation, effective immediately, following Sean Ringsted's move into a newly created chief scientist role.
Johan Oosthuizen (pictured, left) has been named global head of digital business, and Gabriel Lazaro (pictured, right) has been named global head of digital growth and strategic consumer partnerships.
Ringsted, who has spent more than three decades at Chubb and its predecessor, Ace Group, spanning risk, digital transformation, analytics and actuarial leadership, was named chief scientist and executive vice president of Chubb Group, taking on responsibility for the company's artificial intelligence, data and analytics strategy worldwide. He most recently served as executive vice president and chief digital business officer, where he led Chubb's global AI efforts and built the digital business unit he has now handed off in two parts.
Oosthuizen takes executive responsibility for all aspects of Chubb's digital business globally, including the acquisition and performance of partnerships and the deployment of approved products. He joins the role from global digital chief technology officer, where he led Chubb's global digital technology strategy and helped build its embedded insurance and digital partnership capabilities over more than 20 years in digital transformation and innovation.
He reports to Paul McNamee, president of overseas general insurance and executive vice president of Chubb Group, and is separately accountable to Bryce Johns, president of Chubb Life, for life-related production.
Lazaro takes on responsibility for Chubb's partnership relationships specifically, shaping growth strategies across digital platforms, technology companies and emerging ecosystems, spanning both P&C and life insurance across Chubb Overseas General and North America.
He joined Chubb in 2016 as head of digital for Latin America and was promoted in 2021 to executive vice president and head of digital business for overseas general insurance, having previously held international digital roles at AIG, including global digital marketing director and head of digital for emerging markets. He reports to both McNamee and Oosthuizen.
Ringsted said Oosthuizen has been an integral part of the technology strategy that made Chubb's digital ambitions possible, and that his combination of deep technical expertise and commercial instincts for how partnerships create value makes him the right leader for the digital business's next phase of growth.
McNamee said Lazaro has consistently shown his ability to collaborate with digital partners across Chubb Overseas General to build lasting insurance relationships, and that his track record across that division speaks for itself.
The structural logic here is fairly clear: rather than replacing Ringsted with a single successor covering everything he did, Chubb has split his former remit into a technology and product delivery track under Oosthuizen and a partnership growth and relationship track under Lazaro, who reports into Oosthuizen as well as McNamee.
That division suggests Chubb sees managing its existing digital infrastructure and partnerships as a distinct discipline from actively growing new ones, a split that may reflect how large Chubb's embedded and digital partnership book has become since Ringsted originally built the unit, large enough, evidently, to need two dedicated global leaders rather than one.
