Ecclesiastical Insurance has made three senior leadership changes within its UK General Insurance business, all filled from within. The chain of succession carries two specific organisational signals worth noting beyond the personnel changes themselves.
The first is the role Helen Richards (pictured, left) has moved into. Her appointment as group organisational resilience director is to a newly created position rather than a renamed existing one - a signal that Benefact Group is treating organisational resilience as a distinct executive function rather than embedding it within operations leadership. Richards joined Ecclesiastical as a graduate trainee in 2007 and has spent 19 years in leadership roles across underwriting, customer service and operations, most recently as church operations director. A 19-year career arc from graduate entry to a newly created group-level resilience function is the specific professional foundation that makes the appointment analytically significant rather than routine succession.
The second signal is in where Jeremy Trott (pictured, centre) has moved to. Appointed as church operations director, Trott succeeds Richards in the role having spent five and a half years as claims director. Moving the company's most senior claims leader into direct ownership of Ecclesiastical's most commercially distinct customer relationship - the church customer base he will support alongside Benefact Group church relationship director Michael Angell - brings claims experience directly into a segment where property complexity, heritage sensitivity and long-tail liability exposure are all elevated. For an insurer that is the principal underwriter of Grade I listed properties in the UK, that combination of claims depth and church relationship ownership is a specific rather than generic capability.
Andrew Henner (pictured, right) has been appointed interim claims director, succeeding Trott. Henner joined Ecclesiastical in 2017 and currently serves as head of technical claims for property and liability - a background in the specific claims lines most relevant to the church and heritage book he will now oversee on an interim basis.
Ecclesiastical, a subsidiary of Benefact Group, posted gross written premiums of £653.7 million in 2025, a 2.1% increase on the prior year. Founded in 1887, it remains the principal insurer of Grade I listed properties in the UK.
