Willis and Marsh brokers to launch M&A intermediary
Compiled by Insurance24
HARARE, Three London market M&A insurance brokers have resigned from their respective firms to establish a boutique brokerage specialising in transactional risk, this publication has learned.
Alan Hands, placement leader at Marsh’s UK transactional risk team, and two Willis Towers Watson brokers, Clemens Kueppers and Tom Hobart, are working their notice periods. The venture is due to launch in July, and the two Willis brokers will join at a later date, according to sources.
Kueppers and Hobart are currently executive director and divisional director, respectively, for the transaction services team at Willis.
The brokerage, to be called Liva Partners, will specialise in warranty and indemnity, tax liability and environmental liability insurance. It will offer advisory as well as placement services.
The trio had all previously worked together at Marsh before Kueppers and Hobart left for Willis around two years ago.
It is understood the team will have its base in London but will focus on European risks, particularly the UK and Ireland, Germany and central and eastern Europe.
The M&A insurance space is a corner of the London market that has seen a flurry of entrepreneurial start-ups, with brokers and underwriters choosing to leave the traditional established players in order to launch their own businesses.
The typical route for entrepreneurs in the M&A space has been to set up MGAs. The most recent to start writing business is Brockwell Capital, the MGA set up by the former Allied World transactional risk team, which was led by Andrew Graham.
Two other M&A insurance-focused MGAs were established last year, including Acquinex, established by former Beazley M&A underwriter Chris Thompson and former Marsh UK head of transactional risk Chris Jackson. The business was launched on the Eaton Gate platform in August last year but has since taken itself independent.
Capital Risks, set up by former directors of Lloyd’s broker Protean Risk, also launched in June last year with backing from New Zealand-based carrier CBL Insurance.
Meanwhile, US-headquartered MGA Euclid Transactional hired Pembroke underwriters Kit Westropp and Carl Christian Rösiö last year to start writing European M&A insurance out of London.
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Only 2% of insurance buyers have the environmental insurance they need – SEIP
By Insurance24
HARARE, The Society of Environmental Insurance Professionals (SEIP) has named a new president who plans to continue advancing SEIP’s mission to educate brokers, agents and carriers on the namesake product and flip the dismal environmental insurance market on its head.
According to SEIP and its leader, Angela Dybdahl Oroian (daughter of David Dybdahl – famed environmental insurance broker), “After 30 years of continuous product availability and extremely cheap pricing, today only about two out of a 100 insurance buyers has the environmental insurance they need to fill coverage gaps created by pollution/fungus/mold/bacteria/category three water exclusion.”
Part of the problem is the lack of education around environmental insurance from the various sources that brokers use to get designations and build a knowledge base.
“When I got licensed in property and casualty, and getting my P&C license, I didn’t learn one thing about environmental insurance or pollution exclusions on every GL policy. I learned about auto insurance, property, and personal lines,” said Dybdahl Oroian. “I feel honored to take over as president of SEIP to expand the utilization of environmental insurance by the mainstream market of insurance agents that have nowhere else to learn it.”
SEIP’s president has been an environmental insurance broker for a dozen years now and has witnessed firsthand the developments in the space. Right now, pipeline companies are causing a headache for stakeholders, and they’ll be the focus of a session at SEIP’s annual conference in June.
“Pipelines are a really big risk that’s gaining more public attention for their extreme losses, especially in the United States, where taxpayers no longer want to hold this liability for clean-up and are pushing back on the actual pipeline companies themselves for proof of insurance,” said Dybdahl Oroian.
“What pipelines are doing is they’re showing proof of financial responsibility for clean-up costs by being independently wealthy. They won’t buy environmental insurance because they have enough money in reserves to finance a clean-up today, which is fine until, for example, all of a sudden their max output is decreasing and their risk is staying the same.”
Taxpayers often end up being on the hook for clean-ups, especially if toxic materials end up in waterways or affect the communities’ natural resources in other ways.
“If [pipelines] are coming through, they’re a very permanent thing, and their losses can create irreversible degradation to the environmental resources they’re going through,” explained Dybdahl Oroian.
Now, some counties are requiring pipelines to carry environmental insurance, a step forward since oftentimes, these energy powerhouses carry the same general liability policies as flower shops. SEIP hopes to expand knowledge about this issue and many others related to this type of insurance at its conference.
“There is a huge learning curve for P&C agents and brokers because if you don’t know what exclusions to look for, then how can you even start to make sure that you’re offering the right insurance for your client,” Dybdahl Oroian told Insurance Business. “It’s an integral part of our economy, that environmental insurance is used, and that’s really being skipped over in the insurance industry.”
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