Senior appointments this week span private equity and M&A advisory, Lloyd's underwriting and claims leadership, group finance, MGA board governance, and political risk underwriting.
Gallagher has appointed Paul Jeroen van de Grampel (pictured, left) as chief commercial officer, EMEA, within its Private Equity and M&A (PEMA) practice.
Van de Grampel brings more than 25 years across private equity, M&A, asset management and insurance, including work as a corporate M&A lawyer, a partner at a private equity fund, and roles at Aon's M&A and Transaction Solutions business, most recently as regional leader for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Alongside him, Gallagher has appointed Louis Mannell as operations director, EMEA, and Joshua Yardley as operations manager, UK, both joining from a peer firm with experience of significant expansion in private equity and M&A insurance.
Alistair Lester, Gallagher's chief executive for private equity and M&A across the UK and EMEA, said the blend of van de Grampel's skills could have been written for the role, and that Mannell's and Yardley's operational experience will underpin scaled growth across the region. Lester himself joined Gallagher in August 2025 from Aon, where he spent eight years including as global co-chief executive of M&A and transactional solutions.
Brokers advising private equity sponsors and corporate acquirers on warranty and indemnity, tax liability or contingent risk cover now have a more senior, EMEA-wide relationship point at Gallagher specifically for coordinating cross-border deal work, rather than navigating country-by-country PEMA contacts separately.
Van de Grampel's own background as a buy-side lawyer and PE fund partner is directly relevant here, since it means he understands the deal process from the client's side of the table, not just the insurance side, which can translate into faster, more commercially realistic structuring conversations when a broker brings Gallagher into a live transaction.
MS Amlin has appointed Sarah Reidy (pictured, centre) to the newly created role of commercial director, reporting to chief underwriting officer Martin Burke, to serve as a link between the insurer's underwriting teams and senior broker leadership.
Burke said strong broker relationships are fundamental to the business, and that the newly created role reflects a commitment to deepening those partnerships and strengthening market engagement, positioning MS Amlin to better identify opportunities and respond to client needs.
Reidy's background is unusually well suited to that bridging function, having worked inside major broking houses and at Aon Inpoint, which analyses broker and carrier performance data, meaning she understands both how brokers actually evaluate carrier relationships and how underwriters think about portfolio management.
For brokers who have found MS Amlin harder to navigate at a senior relationship level than some competitors, this role is a direct answer to that gap.
Davies has appointed Alban de Vatteville (pictured, right) as group chief financial officer, joining later this year and reporting to group chief executive Dan Saulter, with a seat on the group executive committee.
De Vatteville joins from NielsenIQ, where he is deputy CFO and CFO of its Activation business, a roughly $750 million-revenue unit, having led finance for NielsenIQ's acquisition and integration of GfK, driven a cash generation programme ahead of its public listing, and helped lead its separation from Nielsen under Advent International ownership.
The appointment continues turnover at the top of Davies' finance function. Amber Wilkinson joined as group CFO in July 2024 from DLA Piper, succeeding Tony Debiase after his 12 years in the role.
A CFO with a specific track record in M&A integration and cash generation ahead of Vision 2030's stated ambition to double the business signals Davies is likely to keep acquiring specialist capability. This matters to brokers whose insurer or MGA clients rely on Davies-provided claims or technology services, since continuity and investment in that infrastructure affects service levels further down the chain.
Avid Insurance and Landmark Underwriting, both part of Bishop Street Underwriters, have appointed Stuart Davies as non-executive chairman, succeeding Mark Cliff and Peter Staddon, who each step down after six years chairing Avid and Landmark, respectively.
Davies brings more than 30 years across the London and international insurance markets, including 11 years at Aegis London and a subsequent stint as group chief executive of Sompo Canopius overseeing its international specialty operations including its US business. He has also served as a non-executive director at Apollo Group, supporting its sale to Skyward Specialty, and currently holds non-executive roles at Milestone Risk Solutions and Momentum Insurance.
Bishop Street completed its acquisition of Landmark in February 2025, its first expansion outside North America, before acquiring Avid in October 2025.
For brokers placing business with Avid or Landmark, a chairman with Davies' specific track record running turnarounds and international specialty operations at scale is a signal of governance maturity at exactly the point these MGAs are integrating into a larger US-backed platform. His experience supporting Apollo's sale to a US specialty insurer is particularly relevant given Bishop Street's own international expansion ambitions, suggesting Davies is well placed to help these MGAs navigate the kind of cross-border carrier and investor relationships that determine how much capacity and stability brokers can expect from them going forward.
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance has appointed Maria Victoria Valentin-Gamazo as head of executive and professional lines and head of customer and broker engagement for Spain.
Valentin-Gamazo brings more than 20 years of experience, including 17 years leading financial lines businesses at AIG Iberia, giving her broad expertise across financial lines products and deep knowledge of the Spanish and Portuguese markets.
This appointment explicitly combines underwriting leadership with a customer and broker engagement mandate in a single person, meaning Spanish brokers placing financial lines business with BHSI now have one senior contact accountable for both product strategy and service delivery, rather than separate underwriting and distribution leads who may not always be aligned.
Valentin-Gamazo's 17 years at AIG Iberia specifically in financial lines gives brokers a counterpart with deep, direct knowledge of how Spanish and Portuguese corporate risk actually gets underwritten, useful for brokers navigating complex D&O or professional indemnity placements in the region.
The Fidelis Partnership has appointed Steve Crabb as group head of claims and Megha Khanduja as head of political risk, both based in London.
Crabb brings nearly 25 years of specialty claims experience, having previously served as European head of claims at Allied World. Khanduja joins from Bloomberg, where she was head of Europe and multilaterals for insurance solutions, having previously spent eight years at AXA XL as senior underwriter for political risk, credit and bond, bringing more than 12 years of underwriting experience across emerging markets in Africa, Latin America and South Asia.
The hires follow Fidelis's launch of a war, terror and political violence consortium in June 2026, offering up to $345 million of coverage per risk worldwide, at a time when the 2026 Allianz Risk Barometer found war has overtaken civil unrest as the most-feared political violence exposure among businesses.
John-Paul O'Hare, group director of underwriting at Fidelis, said a world-class claims function is fundamental to the firm's promise to clients, while Richard Coulson, group president for strategic partnerships, said Khanduja's experience matches rising demand for political risk solutions amid a more complex and volatile global environment.
Both hires are directly relevant to brokers placing specialty and political risk business right now, given the rate environment described.
Crabb's claims leadership matters most in exactly the volatile, high-severity classes Fidelis specialises in, where how quickly and fairly a claim is handled after a major loss event shapes whether a broker's client renews with that carrier at all. Khanduja's appointment is explicitly tied to Fidelis's cross-selling strategy with Pine Walk, meaning brokers with clients holding broader specialty or trade credit programmes may find political risk becoming an easier, more integrated add-on to place through Fidelis rather than a separate placement exercise with a different market entirely.
