Sompo Canopius Hires Pearce (Former AIG Exec) as Head of Heavy Industry

Sompo Canopius AG announced the hire of Spencer Pearce as head of heavy industry. Pearce, one of a number of recent senior hires for Sompo Canoipius, joins from AIG.

He will report to Mike Southgate, head of Marine, Energy & Engineering, and will work closely with the existing engineering and power outage teams. This is a new line of business for Sompo Canopius, covering mining, onshore energy and heavy industrial property business globally.

Pearce started in the industry on the underwriting side in 1989, specializing in mining, power and international property. He worked for AXA, AIG and Chubb before moving into broking in 2000, first with Marsh within their power and utilities team and then Aon. He then moved onto the facultative reinsurance team as a partner for JLT Re working on their energy business. In 2011 Pearce joined AIG initially running their mining portfolio, but was then promoted to head of Energy for Europe, covering on and offshore energy, power, mining and construction business for their UK operations.

Mike Duffy, group chief underwriting officer, commented, “I’ve been trying to persuade Spencer to join us for almost a decade. The timing was never quite right before, but I’m very pleased that we have finally ‘got our man.’ One of the things that we’re currently doing is tightening our focus from a broad spectrum of products onto fewer key areas where we believe we can add value to our brokers and clients. Spencer will be a significant part of that and we know that brokers and clients are very interested in the heavy industry coverage that he can offer.”

Sompo Canopius will continue to use specialist managing general agent Priority Underwriting for the underwriting of power utility business.