Sompo International has a new boss for its UK business as the $3.5 billion Aspen takeover beds in.
Nicolas (Nic) Berg (pictured) will take over as chief executive of Sompo's UK insurance business on 1 October, subject to the usual regulatory sign-off. He arrives from SCOR Group, where he was most recently chief executive of SCOR US and head of property and casualty for North America, a specialty and reinsurance background that lines up neatly with the book Sompo has been assembling in London.
Berg succeeds Sarah Stanford, who has led the UK operation since Sompo's takeover of Aspen completed in February 2026.
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Berg's CV will be familiar to a lot of London market veterans. He spent the bulk of his 25-year career at AIG, moving through a run of UK and European roles including heading liability and financial lines for the UK, Lloyd's and EMEA, before switching to Bermuda-headquartered SCOR. He'll be based in London and report to Alessa Quane, Sompo's CEO of International Markets, who took up that post herself only a year ago after joining from Oscar Health.
Quane framed the hire as a strategic one rather than simply a replacement, saying Berg's "deep industry knowledge and significant UK and global market experience" would help in "positioning Sompo as a leading commercial insurer in the UK market." She also thanked Stanford, who is stepping down on 30 September, for steering the business through what was always going to be a tricky first phase of integration.
That integration is the real backdrop. Aspen came into Sompo writing more than $4.6 billion in annual gross written premium, spanning financial and professional lines, casualty and specialty business, plus a Lloyd's presence through Syndicate 4711 that alone wrote around £1 billion of premium in 2024.
Folding a book of that size into Sompo's existing UK platform while also cycling through chief executives is not the easiest combination, and brokers dealing with the merged entity will be watching to see whether Berg's arrival marks the point things stabilise or simply another chapter of change.
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Sompo isn't the only carrier that has seen senior UK talent on the move this year.
Its own European chief executive, Cornelia Röskau, left earlier in 2026 to run Westfield Specialty's new European operation, and the wider London and company market has been through a noticeably busy run of chief executive and senior underwriting changes as firms reposition for a softening rating environment.
Executive churn of this kind tends to cluster around M&A: buyers want their own people in the top seats once the deal itself is done, and outgoing management from the acquired business, in this case Aspen's former UK leadership, often move on once the transition work is complete.
For UK brokers and corporate clients, the practical question is less about the personalities involved and more about continuity of service and appetite. Sompo has been keen to stress that its UK book spanning offices in London, Birmingham and Manchester and writing local and international P&C and specialty lines isn't going anywhere, and that Berg's job is to build on the platform rather than restructure it.
Any senior appointment of this kind still has to clear the Prudential Regulation Authority's senior managers regime , the PRA leads on pre-approving chief executives at PRA-regulated insurers, with the FCA involved on related conduct requirements which is why the announcement, like Stanford's before it, is described as conditional on approval rather than final.
