People Moves: AGCS Promotes Williams to CUO Corporate, Succeeding Buckle; Aon Names Irl to U.S. Reinsurance Treaty Team; AXIS’ Gorman to Arrow Risk Mgmt

This edition of International People Moves details appointments at Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions team and Arrow Risk Management.

A summary of these new hires follows here.

AGCS Promotes Williams to CUO Corporate, Succeeding Buckle

Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE (AGCS) has appointed Shanil Williams as new chief underwriting officer Corporate. In this role, he will join the AGCS SE board of management with effect on Jan. 1, 2022, subject to regulatory approval. Currently global head of Financial Lines at AGCS, Williams will succeed Tony Buckle who will be leaving Allianz for personal reasons.

As new chief underwriting officer Corporate, Williams will oversee AGCS’s global underwriting business in the corporate lines segment such as property, liability, financial lines and alternative risk transfer, as well as the Allianz Group Cyber Center of Competence.

In addition, he will lead Allianz Risk Consulting and key internal underwriting functions such as Accumulation & Catastrophe Risk Management, and Portfolio Performance Management. The board oversight of the Energy & Construction line of business as well as of the Global Pricing team will move to the chief underwriting officer Specialty, creating additional responsibilities for AGCS Chief Underwriting Officer Specialty and Board Member Renate Strasser.

In his current role as global head of Financial Lines, Williams has led the remediation of the portfolio in challenging market conditions, notably in the directors & officers and cyber insurance classes. The turnaround has been underpinned with improvements in pricing tools, active portfolio steering capabilities and reinsurance purchasing to dampen volatility and improve sustainability of results. With this, AGCS has been able to pivot to a profitable growth strategy in financial lines during 2021, targeting new business opportunities across all regions supported by a significant expansion of its underwriting resources.

Williams (41) joined AGCS in 2016 as country manager for New Zealand. In 2018, he relocated to Munich to take on the role as global head of Commercial for Financial Lines before assuming the global leadership of full financial lines team at AGCS in 2019. Prior to joining Allianz, Williams spent 14 years with AIG, and held a number of increasingly senior financial lines regional leadership roles in Auckland, Johannesburg, Paris and London. A New Zealand national, Williams graduated in Business and Finance at the University of Canterbury.

“I would like to thank Tony for his high personal commitment and contribution to the successful realignment of our corporate lines portfolio. On behalf of the AGCS board of management, I wish him all the best for his future, professionally and personally,” commented AGCS CEO Joachim Mueller.

“At the same time, I welcome Shanil as a new member to the AGCS board of management, as we focus increasingly on profitable growth and market opportunities,” Mueller added. “As one of our best internal talents in underwriting and a highly respected team leader of a large global underwriting unit, he is ready to make the next step in his career and assume wider responsibility for AGCS’s underwriting performance and sustained business success.”

***

Aon Names Irl to U.S. Reinsurance Treaty Team

Aon plc, a global professional services firm, announced the appointment of Ashley Irl to its Reinsurance Solutions U.S. Treaty team.

Based in New York, Irl reports to Greggory Clark and Randy Stanco, who co-lead Aon’s New York/New Jersey Reinsurance Solutions office.

In her new role, she is responsible for the structuring and placement of reinsurance for several types of clients – including regional, global and MGAs – as well as providing access to customized analytics and consulting services, such as catastrophe modeling, exposure management solutions and rating agency insights.

Irl was previously a member of Aon’s U.S. Facultative Facilities team, where she placed facility programs that optimized the use of reinsurance capacity. During her career at Aon, she has also been part of the Market and Regulatory Knowledge team within Aon Analytics, providing pricing and peer metrics to reinsurance clients, and Aon Securities, as a member of the distribution team.

***

Arrow Risk Management Appoints Gorman as Underwriting Practice Leader

Arrow Risk Management, the London-based specialist MGA underwriting platform, has announced the appointment of Toby Gorman as underwriting practice leader – Property Binders, with immediate effect.

Gorman joins Arrow Risk to lead the company’s first underwriting practice. In this role, he will be responsible for developing and managing a portfolio of North American property binder business with a focus on residential properties and small commercial entities.

Gorman has over 35 years of specialist experience in North American delegated underwriting. Most recently he was unit head of the North American delegated binding authority business at AXIS Capital, having joined the company in 2017, following its acquisition of Novae Group, where he led the U.S. property facilities. During his career he has also held underwriting roles at GLR Syndicate and GW Price Syndicate.

Topics USA Reinsurance Aon