Intact Insurance is combining its UK and European Specialty Lines operations under Intact Insurance (Europe) and plans to open a UK branch of that business from 1 January 2027, subject to regulatory approval.
The branch would let Intact write European risks from London instead of splitting them between separate UK and EU companies. Specialty Lines handles the group's larger, more complex and internationally exposed risks, mostly through its London market teams.
Intact says brokers will deal with the same underwriters, specialist teams and contacts as now. The aim is to make it easier to place programmes that span the UK, the EU and the wider European Economic Area.
According to Intact, the London branch will mean one set of trading arrangements across the UK, EU and EEA, and a single insurer for clients that operate in several countries. It also expects less admin on cross-border placements and simpler policy documents where UK and European risks are written together.
Nadia Côté, who runs the European business and heads Specialty Lines in the UK, said the new structure would make European risks easier to place. She called it a step towards running Specialty Lines as a single global team.
"Brokers have told us, make it easier to place and manage risks across multiple territories by reducing complexity while retaining our local specialist expertise and that is exactly what we are doing," she said.
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Côté joined from Allianz Commercial, where she was UK managing director, and took over the European role from Lynn O'Leary, who moved to the US to lead Intact's specialty business there, as Insurance Business reported at the time. Since then Intact has started to join up distribution across the two regions, hiring Tom Argentieri as chief distribution officer for UK and Europe Specialty Lines, reporting to her.
The European business is the old RSA Luxembourg, the EU carrier RSA set up after the Brexit vote so it could keep writing continental risks. It was renamed Intact Insurance (Europe) S.A. in October 2025, when Intact Financial Corporation, which bought RSA in 2021, retired the RSA and NIG brands in the UK, Ireland and Europe. The company has since moved its head office from Luxembourg to Paris, with French regulator ACPR records showing its branches registered under the new set-up from 1 January 2026.
It already trades through branches in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. According to its 2025 solvency and financial condition report, it also has a UK branch, but that branch is unregulated and provides operational support only. The plan would turn London into a regulated branch that writes business.
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The restructuring comes as Intact pushes for growth. In commercial lines it wants to grow its UK business from £2.7bn to £5bn by 2030, as Insurance Business reported when UK and Ireland chief Ken Norgrove became president of the Insurance Institute of London. Its multinational offer now runs through partners in more than 170 countries and territories.
Its UK results have lagged. Parent Intact Financial beat analyst forecasts in the first quarter, but its UK business took a hit.
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The January date depends on approval. Since Brexit, an insurer based in the EU needs UK authorisation to run a branch here, and the Prudential Regulation Authority sets out how it authorises and supervises third-country insurance branches, including when it would rather see a subsidiary. Intact has not said when it applied.
