Senior appointments this week span rural and specialist broking, insurance advisory consultancy, technology-driven insurance services, and the industry's global standards body.
Lycetts, the rural, farm and equine specialist broker owned by Benefact Group, has appointed John Dawson (pictured, left) as commercial director to support its growth plans and strengthen its senior leadership team.
Dawson brings experience spanning broking, insurer distribution, product development, e-trading and digital strategy, having most recently served as broker sales director and digital director at Markel, where he led work on e-trading capabilities and simplification projects. He previously spent more than 12 years at Zurich, serving as head of distribution and commercial e-trade manager and representing the insurer on the board of Polaris UK, with earlier senior roles at Countrywide Insurance Marketing.
In his new role, Dawson will lead Lycetts' insurer relationships and help shape its commercial strategy and client offering, with his remit covering sales, marketing and the Underwriting Centre of Excellence, and he will join the Executive Committee.
His background straddling both insurer distribution and broker-facing roles at Markel and Zurich, including his e-trading and Polaris UK experience, suggests a specific focus on how quickly and efficiently Lycetts can quote and bind business, something that matters to any broker or sub-broker placing rural, farm or equine risk through the firm.
Broadstone has appointed Matthew Ford (pictured, centre) to its executive team as head of its Insurance Advisory & Remediation division.
Ford joins from Milliman, where he was a principal in the London life practice focused on pension risk transfer and capital management.
The hire builds on Broadstone's insurance advisory division, which was launched in 2024 following the firm's acquisitions of OAC and Vestigo Partners, and follows the strategic growth investment made in Broadstone by Lovell Minnick Partners in January 2025 specifically to accelerate expansion of that unit. Ford's appointment is intended to expand Broadstone's offering across pension risk transfer, building on its 2025 acquisition of ExactVAL, and broaden its footprint in insurance technology and the Lloyd's and London markets.
A strengthened pension risk transfer capability, backed by Ford's Prudential, WTW and Lloyd's Banking Group background, matters to any broker or consultant advising pension scheme trustees on buy-in and buyout transactions, since Broadstone's growing footprint in this space means more capacity for independent actuarial challenge and modelling support during increasingly complex, high-value placements.
Xceedance, the technology-driven insurance services provider, has appointed Adrian Spieler (pictured, right) to its board of directors, effective immediately.
Spieler has served as chief operating officer at Convex since its 2019 launch alongside fellow industry veterans Stephen Catlin and Paul Brand, and brings more than 30 years of experience across insurance, reinsurance and asset management. Before Convex, he spent 17 years at Swiss Re, later serving as group chief administrative officer at Catlin and chief enterprise operations officer and chief platform officer for insurance at XL Catlin, following Catlin's acquisition by XL.
Xceedance provides outsourced underwriting, claims and operations support to insurers and MGAs, meaning brokers rarely deal with the firm directly but are still affected by its work indirectly, through the speed and consistency of underwriting decisions and claims handling at the carriers and MGAs it supports.
Spieler's background building platform and operations capability at Convex and XL Catlin is specifically relevant to how insurers scale technology-enabled underwriting, and his board-level involvement suggests Xceedance intends to keep pushing further into the kind of operational infrastructure that shapes how quickly brokers can get quotes, bind cover and get claims paid on behalf of clients placed with Xceedance-supported carriers.
ACORD, the global standards-setting body for the insurance industry, has appointed Joe Brace, operations director at the Lloyd's Market Association, and Jennifer Kyung, senior vice president of the business performance office at Nationwide, to its board of directors.
Brace was appointed to his LMA role in April 2025, where he represents LMA members' interests in market modernisation and digitisation initiatives, including advocacy for ACORD data standards adoption through the Velonetic re-platforming programme. Kyung leads shared operations, sales business solutions and data functions at Nationwide, having previously served as chief underwriting officer at USAA and held underwriting and transformation roles at Zurich North America, EY and Accenture.
Tanya Krochta, ACORD's executive vice president and chief operating officer, said it is an exciting time of new leadership at the organisation, adding that having voices on the board from across the global ACORD community will support incoming chief executive John Kellington and colleagues as they shape a digital future for the industry together.
ACORD's data standards sit underneath much of the digital infrastructure brokers use to place business, from e-trading platforms to Lloyd's Blueprint Two-style modernisation programmes, so board decisions here eventually affect how easily broker systems can exchange data with insurers and platforms.
Brace's specific mandate representing Lloyd's Market Association members in Velonetic re-platforming and ACORD standards adoption is particularly relevant to London Market brokers, since faster, more consistent adoption of shared standards across Lloyd's managing agents directly affects how quickly brokers can move business through the market's central digital infrastructure rather than relying on manual processes.
