Senior appointments this week span specialty insurance distribution, renewable energy broker, European insurance leadership, a new country launch in surety, and cross-border tax insurance.
Tokio Marine HCC International has appointed Nicolas Pelletier (pictured, left) as head of distribution, Europe, a newly created role effective September 1, 2026, tasked with strengthening distribution relationships and supporting growth across continental Europe. He reports to Stuart Heath, head of distribution, international.
Pelletier joined Tokio Marine HCC in 2005 as a junior underwriter and has spent his entire two-decade career within the company's financial lines business, most recently as underwriting director for continental Europe and Latin America based in Barcelona. The appointment continues a distribution structure TMHCC International introduced last year when Heath was named head of distribution, international, alongside Brendan Gaine as head of North American distribution, both created to improve collaboration across the company's specialty business lines and its more than 100 products sold across 180 countries.
Pelletier's arrival, with two decades of financial lines underwriting credibility behind him, gives European brokers a senior, technically credible point of contact for pushing to expand which tier they sit in.
HWF Partners has made two senior appointments to its tax insurance practice -- Stuart Cook (pictured, centre) joins as head of structured solutions in London, and Panayiota Burquier (pictured, right) as tax director in Dubai, both effective immediately.
The hires follow 18 months of rapid growth for HWF's tax practice, during which it has appointed dedicated tax leads in Italy, Central and Eastern Europe and Spain.
Cook brings more than 30 years of tax, structured finance and transaction origination experience, including senior roles at Chase Manhattan, BNP Paribas and Citigroup, and 15 years as managing director and global co-head of structured solutions at Societe Generale. Burquier brings more than 15 years of M&A tax experience from Deloitte, Gibson Dunn and CMS, and will lead HWF's tax insurance business across the Middle East, Türkiye and Africa.
The structured finance community has historically been underserved by the transactional risk insurance market, meaning brokers with clients in structured finance, securitisation or complex cross-border financing who have not traditionally thought to bring in tax insurance now have a specific, senior specialist at HWF in the person of Cook.
Meanwhile, Burquier's Dubai appointment is similarly concrete for brokers with Middle East, Türkiye or Africa-based M&A clients, giving them a dedicated regional tax insurance contact rather than routing queries through a London-based generalist team.
Munday joins from WTW, where he led the global renewable practice and London renewables team for the past decade, and has specialised in renewable risk for more than 20 years and in energy, construction and project finance for over 30, having started his career as an underwriter and also held prior roles at Marsh, Aon and Jardine Lloyd Thompson.
The hire continues a pattern of senior renewables recruitment at Gallagher, which has previously brought in specialists including Huw Turner and Mike Parry to build out the same practice area under Raven, who was himself promoted to lead Gallagher's wider energy practice in 2022.
Munday's own market commentary while at WTW regularly covered how renewables insurers price risk differently depending on client type. That kind of granular market intelligence is exactly what retail and wholesale brokers placing renewable energy risk need from a specialist broking partner. Munday's move to Gallagher effectively transfers a decade of proprietary market insight into a rival firm's advisory capability.
Marsh has appointed Jens Florian-Jansen as head of its insurance practice for Europe, a newly created role uniting the firm's insurance, investment, capital markets, advisory, talent and digital capabilities for insurer and reinsurer clients.
Matthias Grass, most recently chief financial officer at Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, succeeds Florian-Jansen as president of Marsh Risk Germany, based in Munich and reporting to Achim Lüder.
Florian-Jansen joined Marsh in 2009 and has held roles spanning client advisory, placement, strategy and digital transformation, leading the firm's digital agenda across continental Europe before being named president of Marsh Risk Germany in 2022. Grass brings two decades of experience including senior roles at Swiss Re and McKinsey & Company.
This appointment sits on the insurer and reinsurer client side of Marsh's business rather than the retail broking side. However, a unified European insurance practice combining placement, digital transformation and advisory capability under one leader could translate into more consistent, better-coordinated support for insurers and reinsurers.
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance has launched surety in France and named Stéphane Fauré as head of surety, France, tasked with building a customer-focused underwriting platform for brokers and clients across the country.
Fauré brings more than a decade of surety and guarantee experience spanning business transformation, regional strategy, broker and bank relationships and product development.
The launch continues a country-by-country European surety expansion BHSI has pursued methodically over the past two years, having previously launched the product line in Ireland in March 2026 under Sean Mulvey and in Spain in July 2024 under Jesús Barbero, alongside broader European growth including a Nordic expansion and new French coverage lines such as directors' and officers' liability and environmental impairment liability in recent years. BHSI's France team will focus on upper middle market and large corporate clients, particularly in infrastructure, construction, renewables and services.
A new market entrant with an A++ AM Best-rated balance sheet behind it gives brokers an additional carrier option in a class where capacity and issuer credit strength matter enormously to project owners and lenders relying on the bond.
Given BHSI has now replicated this exact playbook - launch, name a specialist local head, target upper middle market and large corporate segments - across Ireland, Spain and now France brokers active in other European surety markets not yet covered should reasonably expect BHSI to keep expanding this line further across the continent.
