Four organisations reshaped their leadership this week, in moves spanning trade body engagement, new personal lines capacity, European M&A advisory and Continental European commercial underwriting.
Specialist MGA Euna has appointed Steve Morse (pictured) as head of personal lines, reporting to chief executive Ross Dingwall. Morse joins from Aviva, where he was underwriting director for Aviva Private Clients. He previously held a similar role at AXA XL and spent more than 15 years at Hiscox, becoming a partner in 2017.
He joins the personal lines team that Euna launched in July with Specialist Home, its non-standard residential and contract works product, covering non-standard construction, listed buildings, unoccupied homes and high-profile clients.
Dingwall said Morse's appointment "underlines our ambition to build a genuinely specialist proposition that gives brokers greater choice." For brokers with high-net-worth or non-standard residential clients, Morse's senior private client experience across three major insurers is a clear signal of the depth Euna is building behind its new capacity.
The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has appointed Dimitra Christakou as director of membership and commercial development, overseeing member relations and the ABI's events, networking, and learning and development programmes. She joins from senior leadership roles at BusinessLDN and Bloomberg, bringing a commercial and stakeholder engagement background rather than a technical underwriting one.
ABI director general Hannah Gurga said Christakou's "experience, leadership and energy will make a strong contribution" to the organisation's work for members.
Gallagher has appointed Philip Frerks as head of transaction solutions in Germany, and Andrea Karkotis as associate director, warranty & indemnity, in the Netherlands. The appointments continue a steady build-out of its private equity and M&A (PEMA) practice across Europe, which has also added country heads in Italy, the Nordics and France since June.
Frerks, based in Frankfurt, joins from Malakut Group after a decade advising on M&A-related risk. Karkotis, based in Amsterdam, joins from Clifford Chance.
Alistair Lester, Gallagher's CEO for private equity and M&A, UK & EMEA, said Germany is "one of Europe's most influential private equity and M&A markets", and that Frerks's arrival would build out the firm's capabilities across the wider EMEA region.
For brokers and clients active in cross-border M&A, hires across five markets in four months point to Gallagher building PEMA into a pan-European practice rather than making one-off appointments.
Sompo has appointed Scott Toland as head of commercial lines and insurance in Continental Europe. He reports to Ralph Brand, president of insurance in Continental Europe & Turkey, and is based in Zurich.
Toland will define and execute commercial lines underwriting strategy across the region, overseeing underwriting, distribution, client management and risk control services. He brings more than 25 years of insurance experience across the US and Europe, and joins from a large international insurer where he was most recently chief underwriting officer for EMEA.
Brand said the appointment "marks an important step in the continued development of our commercial lines platform" in the region.
