Senior appointments this week span Lloyd's syndicate leadership, private equity distribution, professional indemnity broking and underwriting, and delegated authority.
DA Strategy has appointed Rachel Kelly (pictured, left) as manager, bringing more than a decade of policing experience including leadership roles with Kent Police, where she managed complex operations, assessed risk and worked across multiple agencies.
She most recently served as a detective sergeant and acting detective inspector in Kent Police's custody operations, overseeing high-risk situations and time-critical decisions, having previously supervised complex domestic abuse investigations.
Kelly will initially focus on DA Strategy's internal operations, drawing on her team leadership and stakeholder coordination experience, before moving into client-facing delegated authority work.
For MGAs and coverholders working with DA Strategy on delegated authority governance, a manager with a genuine background in high-stakes, time-critical decision-making and multi-agency coordination brings a different lens to risk assessment than a typical insurance career path would, potentially useful once she moves into advising clients on the operational and governance side of delegated authority arrangements specifically.
Folgate Underwriting Agency has appointed Terry Shaw (pictured, centre) as chief underwriting officer for regional professional indemnity, joining from Aqueous, where he spent 11 years and most recently led the PI team.
Shaw began his London Market career at QBE and Lockton before moving into the regional market with CNA Hardy and then Aqueous, giving him relationships with brokers across both jurisdictions. He will lead Folgate's regional PI book alongside Paul Freeman, chief underwriting officer for UK and international PI, who joined Folgate from Liberty Specialty Markets in April 2026 after 17 years there.
The appointment continues rapid growth in Folgate's PI team, which has expanded to seven people since Debbie Farman joined as head of PI renewals and Mathew Harvey as head of PI in November 2025, both from Aqueous, followed by Freeman's arrival in April 2026.
A regional broker who previously had to route more complex or unusual PI risks through a London-focused underwriter now has a dedicated regional underwriting lead with genuine standing relationships in that exact market, which should mean faster, more informed decisions on regional cases rather than everything being assessed through a London-market lens.
The fact that three of Folgate's last four PI hires came from Aqueous is also worth noting, since it suggests Folgate is deliberately building a team with shared prior working relationships, which can translate into smoother internal referrals between London and regional cases for brokers working both markets.
AXA XL has appointed Debbie Durkan (pictured, right) as head of private equity and business development, UK & Lloyd's, a newly created role starting October 1.
Based in London, Durkan will build out AXA XL's private equity practice and lead business development across key growth initiatives. She spent the majority of her career at major brokers, starting at Marsh before moves to Gallagher and JLT, rejoining Marsh after its 2019 acquisition of JLT, where she headed Marsh's PEMA post-acquisition and portfolio management practice in the UK. She joined AXA XL in January 2025 leading distribution for global energy transition and connected risks.
Durkan's career on the broking side of the business, including running Marsh's own PEMA post-acquisition practice, means she arrives at AXA XL already understanding how brokers structure private equity transaction risk placements from the client side.
For brokers with PE-backed clients or portfolio companies, having a senior insurer contact who has personally sat where they sit is likely to make placement conversations more efficient, and her business development remit suggests AXA XL wants this role visible and accessible to broking partners rather than purely product-focused.
HDI Global UK & Ireland has appointed Louise Radford as active underwriter for Lloyd's Syndicate 2029, its planned new syndicate following Lloyd's recent approval in principle for its establishment.
Radford is currently head of financial lines at HDI UK & Ireland and will continue leading that team alongside her new role, reporting to Adam Curran, chief underwriting officer for specialty. She joined HDI in 2020 as a senior underwriter in the management liability team, bringing prior underwriting and broking experience including within the Lloyd's market.
As active underwriter, Radford will have overall responsibility for the syndicate's underwriting strategy, portfolio performance, regulatory compliance and risk appetite, playing a central role in shaping its long-term growth as part of HDI's wider Xcelerate29 strategy.
Radford retaining her financial lines leadership alongside the active underwriter role suggests HDI intends Syndicate 2029's early appetite to lean heavily on financial lines expertise. This serves as a useful signal for brokers with management liability, D&O or professional indemnity risk who might benefit from being among the syndicate's first relationships once it opens for business, rather than approaching it only after its book is already established.
Consilium has appointed Henry Menage as professional indemnity new business executive within its UK & Ireland Risk Solutions division.
Menage joins from Citynet with five years of specialist PI broking experience, including large, complex and distressed accounts, alongside expertise in cyber, D&O and financial lines with particular experience in construction.
Consilium's own pitch, genuine independence with no restriction on where placements are structured, is aimed directly at brokers and clients who value a wholesale partner unconstrained by ownership ties to a particular capacity provider.
Menage's specific experience with distressed PI accounts is a useful signal for retail brokers with construction or other hard-to-place PI clients currently struggling for terms in a soft but selective market, since that's exactly the kind of case where an independent wholesale broker's freedom to shop the whole market matters most.
