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Key Senior Hiring Trends Within Global Insurance, July 2022

Welcome to our insurance senior hires trends update, featuring interactive charts and a deeper dive into selected hires and internal moves over the last month.

All our insurance sector hiring data covers senior level appointments, moves and promotions, sourced from TALNT, Sheffield Haworth’s proprietary AI-driven platform for tracking executive moves, which gathers and analyses data from 300+ reputable public sources around the globe.

Of the 127 senior global insurance moves tracked over the last month, the ones that received the most interest from our subscribers on TALNT were:

  • Jane McGovern, who has been appointed Chief Risk Officer at MLC Life. McGovern joins the company from iCare, where she was a senior NSW executive, and will take up her new role on the 19th September. Prior to iCare, McGovern worked as Zurich Financial Services’ risk chief.
  • Asit Rath, who has been appointed the new CEO of Aviva Life Insurance, India. Rath joins the firm from Prudential Myanmar Life Insurance, where he was also CEO. He has over 22 years of banking and insurance experience in India and Myanmar.
  • Ana Dores, who has been appointed Chief Underwriting Officer for International Financial Lines in APAC Europe at AXA XL. Dores joined AXA XL in 2014 and has been leading International Financial Lines for Iberia at the company since 2017. She is due to start her new role in September.  
  • Grant Baxter, who joins MS Amlin as Head of Reinsurance and Deputy CUO. Baxter joins the firm from Liberty, where he has held several senior roles, most recently Head of Portfolio Management in Liberty’s global risk solutions division.
  • Mary O’Connor, who has been named CEO of Howden’s new capital, advisory and placement business for financial institutions and corporates, HowdenCAP. The new business is designed to combine Howden’s traditional insurance strengths with the skills and experience of those with backgrounds in banking, law and ‘Big-Four’ consultancy. O’Connor therefore is joining the company from KPMG, where she most recently served as Acting CEO.
  • Julie Szudarek, who has joined the board of directors of Ohio-based InsurTech Root. Szudarek joins the board having been CEO of Atida. She brings 25 years’ experience of driving ecommerce and technology-enabled businesses. Prior to Atida, Szudarek held senior leadership roles at Groupon, Orbitz and Accenture.
  • Parul Kaul-Green, who has been appointed as Chief Digital Strategy Officer at Liberty Specialty Markets. Kaul-Green will be responsible for driving the digital strategy for underwriting and developing a long-term roadmap to ensure that LSM is at the forefront of the digital evolution across its global markets. Kaul-Green joins from AXA XL where she was Chief of Staff, Asia Pacific and Europe, responsible for developing the corporate strategy, ESG governance, and strategic communication.
  • [DS1] Tahir Thomson, who has joined WTW’s Insurance Consulting and Technology business from PwC. Tahir Thomson brings 20 years of actuarial, risk, governance and regulatory experience to her new role, where she will help insurers to enhance the value of their risk and capital management capabilities.
  • Danny Engell, who has been appointed Senior Vice President, Chief Underwriting and Analytics Officer at Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies’ Workers Compensation Division. Engell was previously the Senior Vice President and Chief Underwriting Officer for Republic Indemnity and led the data analytics and strategic planning groups. Prior to this, he has held executive positions with Glow Insurance Services and ICW Group.
  • Thierry Derez, CEO of Covéa, who has been named the new Chairman of the Board at Bermuda-based reinsurance firm PartnerRe, which was recently acquired by Covéa. PartnerRe’s new board will be comprised of seven directors, of which three are independent directors.
  • Mark Hartigan, LV= interim chief executive, who is stepping down from his role. The process to appoint a new, permanent, chief executive is already underway. Hartigan has agreed that he will remain in his interim role while the search for his successor takes place.
  • Elizabeth Mann, who has been appointed Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Verisk, effective September 15, 2022. Mann joins Verisk from S&P Global, where she was CFO for the Ratings and Mobility divisions, and prior to that Senior Vice president of Capital Management. She also held significant roles at Goldman Sachs, including Managing Director of the firmwide strategy group and the technology, media & telecom investment banking group.

Global senior insurance hires, July 2022

The following chart shows the overall trend in senior global insurance hires since January 2021. After an 19-month peak of 170 new senior appointments in June, last month saw this number fall slightly to 127 – still the second highest total since January 2021.

Global senior insurance hires by sub sector, July 2021 – July 2022

Looking deeper at senior hiring trends by sub-sector, we can see that the number of appointments declined in every sub-sector besides InsurTech, which almost doubled its number of senior appointments to 13 last month:

Gender balance of senior global insurance hires, July 2022

Of the new senior appointments we tracked last month, the average global gender split was remarkably similar across all regions. At a global level, it was 30.5% women and 69.5% men. In EMEA the proportion of female senior hires was 30.3%. In the Americas this was 33.9%. In AsiaPAC it was 30.5%:

Top 10 companies with the most new appointments in July 2022

Here are the global insurance businesses who made the most senior appointments in June, with BMS way out in front, after three months during which Willis Towers Watson was leading the charge: