Three of the insurance market's most active players have announced a series of senior appointments and strategic expansions this week, spanning London's transactional risk market, Bermuda's alternative capital space, and Continental Europe's growing commercial insurance landscape.
Gallagher has appointed Laura Repko (pictured, left) as senior director, capital solutions, within its global Private Equity and M&A practice (PEMA), based in London.
Repko joins from HSBC, where she held the position of investment director, direct lending. She brings more than 15 years of corporate finance experience, having also worked with private equity firms at Deutsche Bank, Beechbrook Capital and Permira Credit, with expertise spanning the origination, structuring and execution of financial transactions across Europe.
In the newly created role, she will focus on bespoke solutions across lending scenarios including credit enhancement, working capital financing, compliance with banking and accounting regulations, and capital event situations. She will work alongside Gallagher's M&A transactional risk and real estate advisory teams.
The appointment comes at a moment of sustained momentum in the global M&A insurance market. Global private capital deal value reached $2.1 trillion in 2025, a four-year high, despite an approximately 8% decline in deal volume compared with 2024. Transactional insurance solutions spanning warranty and indemnity, tax, contingent risk and insurance due diligence are now considered standard instruments across geographies, sectors and deal sizes, with 65% of senior dealmakers globally expecting the use of warranty and indemnity insurance to rise in 2025.
Steve Jones, CEO of private equity and M&A solutions in the UK, said Repko's expertise would enhance Gallagher's ability to bridge expectation gaps between lenders and borrowers.
"Private capital continues to be a huge driver of transformative growth around the world, and I'm looking forward to working with my new colleagues to maximise deal-value creation for clients, every time, across a wide range of lending scenarios," Repko said.
Beazley has appointed Stefan Wunderlich (pictured, right) as head of alternative risk transfer (ART), expanding his existing remit as head of parametric, with a planned relocation to Bermuda subject to immigration approval.
Wunderlich joined Beazley in June 2025 following a 20-year career at Swiss Re, where he specialised in modelling and underwriting property and natural catastrophe risks. His expanded role coincides with a significant strategic commitment to Bermuda, where Beazley has confirmed a new office at Ninety-One, 91 Front Street, secured through Brookfield Asset Management and set to open in June 2027.
Beazley deployed $500 million of capital to establish a Bermuda platform targeting the alternative risk transfer market, including insurance-linked securities opportunities, with the aim of becoming operational from early 2026. The platform's next step is to move into securitisation and the transformation of risks, with a dedicated cyber ILS fund planned for launch in 2026, which would be the first such strategy available to third-party investors. The Bermuda platform is expected to deliver approximately $400 million in premium by 2030.
Sompo has appointed Bart Van Gysegem as country manager, insurance for Belgium and the Netherlands, opening offices in both Brussels and Rotterdam as it moves to establish local operations in the two markets.
Gysegem brings more than 30 years of insurance industry experience, joining from Aon where he served as managing director of its Belux major accounts segment from 2018. Prior to that he spent two decades in senior management roles at two large international carriers.
Sompo received regulatory licences to write primary insurance locally in Belgium and the Netherlands in March 2025, extending its commercial P&C capabilities in a region where it already operates in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. The opening of the Brussels and Rotterdam offices marks the operational delivery of those licences, with Van Gysegem now tasked with building local infrastructure and teams in both countries.
