Jensten buys Ravenhall; Six leave Ed for Consilium; HF moves to Media City

From Post this week

Top 100 UK Insurers 2022: AM Best Commentary - Insurers facing future uncertainty as inflation bites

FCA dealt with less than a quarter of whistleblower cases received in 2021/22

Protect Duty legislation likely to push up the price of liability cover - RSA UK’s Harrison

Perils pegs London’s 2021 summer flood losses at £281m

FCA expects to grow staff headcount by ‘400 to 500 this financial year’

Isle of Man hosts insurtech ‘accelerator’

Briefing: Could Allianz explore direct business again?

Pool Re makes case for becoming treaty reinsurer

From people this week

Axa’s Tara Foley: Moja is already attracting younger customers than other brands

60 Seconds With… Sue Nimmo, Markerstudy

Blog: The underwriting evolution

Pick of the week

Jensten Group completes Ravenhall acquisition

Date announced: 11 October
Deal value: N/A

The Jensten Group has completed the acquisition of Ravenhall Risk Solutions, following final regulatory approval, bringing an additional 2,500 clients and 25 staff to the group.

Leeds-based Ravenhall serves commercial and personal clients including solutions for traditionally harder to place risks such as unmanned aerial vehicle operators and the equestrian industry.

Alistair Hardie, Jensten group CEO commented: “Ravenhall has a long-standing and established reputation for service. The management team and staff all share our core values and culture, focused on providing exceptional broking service and putting clients first, making us an ideal fit.”

He added: “We are seeing more and more community brokers approaching us to help secure their future as independent brokers focused on delivering for their customers. They are also keen to seek support as they look to wrestle with increasingly complex compliance and administrative demands.”

Deals/News of the week

Axa UK calls on government to create taskforce to make buildings fit for the future

Date announced: 12 October
Deal value: N/A

Major organisations across the built environment sector have signed a letter to Simon Clarke, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, urging the government to set up a new cross-industry taskforce to make what is built today fit for the different and evolving needs of future generations.

The letter calls on the new government to put sustainability, longevity, safety and resilience at the heart of its plans to get Britain working, building, and growing again. It warns that without reforming building regulations and policy, the government risks exposing people across the country to a host of economic and social costs associated with poorly designed, insufficiently regulated, and ageing buildings. These include higher-than-average energy bills, lower home resale value, and increased vulnerability to extreme weather events.

Axa UK, Arcadis and Kennedys are amongst the 11 businesses calling for a sustainable building taskforce to consolidate a long-term, integrated approach to housing and building policy, which is reflective of the built environment’s potential to drive positive outcomes for consumers and the wider economy.

Claudio Gienal, CEO, Axa UK & I said: “As a leading insurer, Axa UK takes a keen interest in the evolution of the building landscape, including the need to see a safer, greener, and future-proofed building stock. The built environment plays a vital role in supporting the UK’s energy security and building resilience to emerging risks such as flooding and extreme weather.

“Unfortunately, regulation is yet to catch up with the crucial need to make what we build today fit for the evolving requirements of future generations. That’s why we are calling on the government to create a sustainable buildings taskforce to bring together all those involved in the development of the UK’s building stock and help communities reap the benefits of a well-planned, energy efficient, and more resilient building landscape.”

First Central partners with Clausematch to streamline policy management processes

Date announced: 11 October
Deal value: Undisclosed

First Central Insurance has embarked on Clausematch’s compliance management platform to streamline its drafting, review and approval processes.

Ben Lowing, risk & compliance director commented: “We have been impressed by the Clausematch team throughout our interactions with them. They have been extremely helpful, engaging and thorough in understanding our business so they can best support us in our goals. The system itself is flexible and has been easily configurable to our needs, and through the implementation we have learned how to ensure it is future-proofed for the continued growth in scale and complexity of our business.” 

The First Central team highlighted the growing need to adopt its policy management system to a platform that would mitigate the risk of error as the company scaled and matured. Clausematch has allowed First Central to streamline its policy drafting, reviewing, and approval processes in a clear and easy-to-understand way.

Freddie Frith, Clausematch head of sales added: “Our goal was to offer a solution for First Central that eliminated the burden of manually managing its compliance obligations. With a single platform, it is now possible in a few clicks to run the end-to-end lifecycle of policies so that they can easily be drafted, reviewed, approved, and finalised. Clausematch makes all of that instantly available in an easy-to-use repository for colleagues to access and attest to.”

Six financial lines specialists leave Ed Broking for Consilium

Date announced: 12 October
Deal value: N/A

Consilium, the international reinsurance broker, part of The Aventum Group, has announced that six leading financial lines specialists are joining from Ed Broking.

Neal Hughes and Nick Bachmann, previously divisional directors at Ed are appointed managing partners at Consilium. Josh Plummer has been appointed partner at Consilium. He was a senior broker producer at Ed Broking and prior to that spent six years at Dual. Lee Rogalski, also a senior broker at Ed joins Consilium as an associate partner. Duncan Childs, wording advisory manager at Ed and Alex Atkinson, a divisional director at Ed are both appointed partners. 

All of the new appointments will join Consilium’s Professional Executive Risks team, managing professional & financial lines and cyber insurance globally for direct policyholder clients and retail and wholesale broking partners.

Josh Plummer, one of the new partners at Consilium, commented: “Consilium is built on a platform that is far ahead of its competitors, digitalising client experience as well as products, while also supported by in-house claims and expert legally trained wording and advocacy services. Drawing on the capabilities of the Aventum group, we’re more advanced in expertise, data and actuarial capability than any other broker, regardless of size. As brokers, our knowledge, expertise and service is key - we are part of the ecosystems of the communities we serve. With this team and with Aventum behind us I look forward to taking our client services to a new level.”

David Bearman, CEO for Aventum, added: “I’m very excited to welcome these latest appointments to our ranks. We now easily have the most experienced broking team working in the international financial centres and the investment management community. The team’s combined leadership skills and particular expertise in this market, together with our inhouse legal and exciting new actuarial capabilities, makes Consilium a world leader now in global financial lines broking.”

Certua partners with Beazley to provide bespoke online placing platforms for small programme and scheme business

Date announced: 11 October

Deal value: N/A

Certua has partnered with Beazley to provide embedded specialist insurance for small scheme and programme business.

Specialist insurer Beazley will use Certua’s embedded insurance platform to enable small scheme opportunities to be underwritten in an efficient and cost effective way, for both brokers and insureds.

The first product to go live in the UK with Certua is Beazley’s combined medical malpractice, professional indemnity and public liability product for small companies and individuals providing medical services. Plans are being developed to expand the range of products that Beazley will offer via Certua’s platform.

Tom Williams, CEO, Certua said:  “Certua’s Embedded Insurance platform is designed to handle full cycle underwriting risk assessment and product administration, as well as provide a bespoke interface for scheme business. Our tailored platform maximises the benefits of technology for all parties in the placing chain, enabling a tailored user experience, reducing operational overheads, streamlining processing and increasing profitability for small scheme and programme business that has become increasingly difficult to underwrite profitably.”

Nick Pearce, focus group leader, international specialty programmes – healthcare at Beazley commented: “We are excited by this partnership, which will enable us to better support our brokers in finding a solution for small scheme and programme healthcare business”.

Data enrichment partnership with Percayso powers up insurtech motor insurer Zixty

Date announced: 14 October

Deal value: N/A

Insurance data intelligence provider, Percayso Inform has been appointed to develop and deliver a bespoke data enrichment solution to support the new motor insurer, Zixty.

Zixty provides a fully-digital customer experience initially offering short term private vehicle insurance from 60 minutes to 28 days. 

Commenting on the partnership, Andy James, co-counder and CEO of Zixty said: “We want to offer something different for customers that have an environmental conscience and would like to make a difference at no cost to themselves. Giving a great price to our customers and protecting our insurers requires powerful and accurate data. While there are a number of data partners active in the insurance market some of whom I’ve worked with in the past, the level of flexibility that Percayso offered is vital.”

The Percayso solution will allow Zixty to draw data at the point of quote through Percayso’s API from multiple sources to better understand both the customer and their vehicle to deliver fairer, more flexible pricing. The infrastructure that Percayso has built has the capability to handle millions of transactions a day, delivering responses in milliseconds.

“Our modular insight as a service proposition has been designed to allow insurance providers of all sizes at all stages of their business to make a step change in their customer insight,” said Percayso Inform managing director, Rich Tomlinson.

Verisk launches EV database for UK and Irish motor insurance markets

Date announced: 12 October

Deal value: N/A

The number of electric vehicles sold in the UK and Ireland continues to rise. The risk profile of cars on the road is changing, making access to technical electric vehicle data critical for insurers and brokers. To help support strategic underwriting and pricing decision making, Verisk has announced the launch of its Electric Vehicle Database for the UK and Ireland.

Verisk’s Electric Vehicle Database is a proprietary, technical dataset for all new and existing models of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). The Database provides insurers, brokers, and MGAs with access to over 175 technical attributes. These attributes include an EV’s battery, efficiency, and performance, as well as information on each vehicle’s acceleration, top speed, range of a single charge in different conditions, battery capacity, charger location and warranty period.

“We’ve entered the electric motor age, and Verisk is uniquely equipped to help insurers to create new rating attributes for prediction of risk associated with EVs,” said Jonathan Guard, commercial director, Ireland, Verisk. “Verisk is working with its customers to bring new datasets and services that help them to continue to make well-informed decisions as technologies and regulations change.”

All of the electric vehicle datasets are available via batch append services or through Verisk’s Data Insight Hub, a continuously expanding source of insurance data and analytics accessible at any part of the customer journey, including the point of quote.

And finally:

• Zurich head of retail Dave Martin has resigned, as first reported in sister publication Insurance Age. Martin left his previous role as director of SME and corporate partnerships at Allianz in November 2018 to take up the role at Zurich in April 2019.

• MS Amlin Underwriting has appointed Andrew Carrier as CEO. Carrier, currently MS AUL’s CUO, will take up the role on 1 January 2023, subject to regulatory approval.

• HF is moving to a new office in Greater Manchester. Located in Orange Tower, Media City, in Salford, the new location is part of a waterfront tech, digital and creative hub, home to companies including the BBC, ITV, Kellogg’s and Ericsson. 

• Markel International, a subsidiary of Markel Corporation has appointed Rohan Davies as divisional managing director of a newly merged wholesale marine and energy division.

  Operating as two separate business lines since 2018, the decision to combine the businesses under Davies, the current divisional managing director of energy, is designed to further enhance the broker and client proposition and support the continued delivery of its long-term growth strategy.

• HDI Global Specialty has appointed Kirsten Westly to the role of claims director. She will report to Rafael Rebitzky, managing director and CUO of HDI with effect from 1 November. Westly will take over the role from Clare Constable who will leave HDI in November.

• Aon has announced a new line-up for its UK commercial risk leadership team.
  
  James Baum, previously head of UK commercial risk and Aon’s global broking centre, is taking a new role as head of wholesale and specialty broking. Jane Kielty is becoming the head of commercial risk UK. She will retain her UK chief commercial officer responsibilities until a successor is appointed; this process is now underway.

•  Zurich has appointed Penny Seach, currently CUO EMEA, to the role of group CUO, effective January 1, 2023. Seach will report to Sierra Signorelli, CEO of commercial insurance. Hayley Robinson, who has held this role since June 2021, has decided to step down at the end of the year for family health reasons.

• Sirius Point has announced the appointment of Steve Yendall as CFO, effective 31 October 2022. Yendall will report to CEO Scott Egan, as a member of Sirius Point’s executive leadership team.

• Allen Seldon has been appointed director of product & proposition for Close Brothers. He began his role at the beginning of October and reports to MD of finance, Seán Kemple.