Three UK insurance businesses have announced senior hires and internal promotions this week, with two appointments carrying specific analytical signals about where their respective markets are heading.
Moonrock Insurance has appointed Rory Galloway (pictured, left) as chief data and actuarial officer, a newly created executive role at the London-based specialist underwriter. Galloway joins from Markel International, where he served as head of reserving and signing actuary. A Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, he brings more than two decades of actuarial and insurance experience across underwriting and reinsurance organisations and will lead Moonrock's actuarial, pricing, portfolio analytics and data strategy functions across its unmanned aviation and advanced air mobility book.
Creating a CDAO role at this stage is a specific organisational signal for a line where the loss data needed to price with confidence is still accumulating. Unmanned aviation and advanced air mobility do not have the decades of claims history that mature specialty lines carry - which makes the analytical infrastructure for pricing, reserving and portfolio management more consequential earlier than it would be in an established line. The scale of the exposure Moonrock is now underwriting gives that infrastructure investment its specific commercial rationale: in April 2025, Moonrock and Apollo launched a $122.5 million drone and eVTOL insurance facility providing liability coverage up to $100 million and property damage cover up to $22.5 million, backed by AEGIS London, AXIS, Beazley, Helvetia, IQUW and Munich Re. That is facility capacity rather than written premium, but it gives the CDAO appointment its specific portfolio complexity context. Galloway's reserving background at Markel is the specific credential that makes him analytically suited to building that infrastructure rather than simply maintaining it.
Moonrock's CEO said the appointment reflects where the company believes the future of insurance is heading and demonstrates its commitment to investing in analytical capability. Galloway said he was attracted by the ambition to combine deep technical expertise with a modern, data-driven approach to insurance.
Rokstone has made two new underwriting appointments and an internal promotion across its specialist agricultural underwriting business, iFarm Underwriting, and its SME underwriting business, iSure. Adam McWilliams joins iFarm as an underwriter from NFU Mutual, where he spent three years as a commercial package underwriter. He is joined by Gurjot Bagri, who brings four years of underwriting experience with Markel and AXA.
The more analytically significant move is internal. Lee Ellis, who has led iFarm and iSure UK since 2022, moves into a newly created digital prioritisation and change lead role at Rokstone rather than a lateral operational equivalent. Shane Mustill, who joined in 2025 as head of distribution with more than 14 years of specialist agricultural underwriting and broker development experience including prior senior roles at Geo Underwriting, succeeds Ellis as managing director of iFarm UK and iSure UK. Redirecting a senior operational leader into digital capability development - rather than replacing them with an equivalent operational hire - treats digital transformation as a strategic priority that warrants experienced leadership rather than a support function that can be staffed separately. Mustill said the changes represent continuity alongside continued investment, with Rokstone's proposition of specialist underwriting expertise, digital capabilities and A-rated capacity remaining unchanged.
Lumara, the MISSION-backed MGA specialising in business insurance and motor trade combined cover, has appointed Jason Hartard (pictured, right) as motor trade development underwriter. Hartard brings more than 20 years of motor trade underwriting experience and will lead Lumara's underwriting across London and the South of England, working with its local broker network. Lumara also writes property damage and business interruption cover for UK-based SMEs and mid-market clients, with capacity up to £35 million total sum insured per location. David Aslin, chief executive and co-founder of Lumara, said the appointment brings strong broker relationships and motor trade specialism to support the firm's next phase of growth.
