People Moves: Carbon Names Willetts Head of Specialty; Canopius Hires 4 in Credit & Political Risk Team; BHSI Taps Chaucer’s Merton to Lead UK Customer & Broker Engmt
This edition of International People Moves details appointments at Carbon Underwriting, Canopius Group and Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance (BHSI) .
A summary of these new hires follows here.
Carbon Underwriting Appoints Head of Specialty
Carbon Underwriting Ltd., the London-based, managing general underwriter and Lloyd’s syndicate, announced the appointment of Dale Willetts as head of Specialty in addition to supporting the development of Carbon’s technology capabilities.
Willetts brings a wealth of leadership and Specialty underwriting experience to the role and his priority this year will be to spearhead the development and growth of Carbon’s Accident & Health (A&H) proposition.
Before joining Carbon, Willetts was executive vice president, head of Specialty Lines, for Sompo International for five years where he built the A&H portfolio. In a distinguished career spanning 30 years, he has also held leadership roles with ANV, Travelers and other specialty underwriters in the field.
Canopius Boosts Global Credit & Political Risk Team With 4 Hires
Canopius Group, the London-based global specialty re/insurer, announced the appointments of Angelos Deftereos as head of Structured Credit, and Boris Medimorec and Virad Patel as underwriters in its Credit & Political Risk team in London. They take up their roles with immediate effect.
In addition, Dimitri Plastiras joins the APAC team in February as an Underwriter. He will initially be based in Sydney and will transfer to Singapore later in the year.
Deftereos brings over two decades of experience to Canopius. He joins from Volante Global, where he held the position of managing director – Structured Finance, specializing in significant risk transfer (SRT) insurance, a growth area that he will lead in his new role. Prior to this, Deftereos worked as head of Capital Mitigation and Operational Risk Insurance at AXA XL. He has also held senior roles at Morgan Stanley, Aon, Marsh and Goldman Sachs.
Medimorec joins Canopius from UK Export Finance having previously spent two years with Arthur J. Gallagher and almost 15 years with MUFG as managing director. He brings more than 25 years’ extensive private and public sector experience across a number of markets, sectors and debt products, bringing insights from both banking and insurance.
Patel joins Canopius from ING, having spent 10 years at the bank across risk, origination, and distribution functions. Most recently, Patel held the position of vice president for Loan Capital Markets.
Plastiras joins Canopius from KPMG in Sydney where he was an associate director for Debt Advisory Services. Prior to that, he spent 12 years at Westpac with experience across structured asset finance, trade finance and financial institutions.
Canopius has underwriting operations in Australia, Bermuda, Singapore, the UK and US. It underwrites through Lloyd’s Syndicate 4444 (managed by Canopius Managing Agents Ltd.); a US surplus lines insurer, Canopius US Insurance Inc.; and Canopius Reinsurance Ltd, a Bermuda-based Class 4 reinsurer.
BHSI Taps Chaucer’s Merton to Lead UK Customer & Broker Engagement
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance (BHSI) announced it has appointed Fiona Merton as head of Customer & Broker Engagement, UK. The position was previously held by Mark Walker, who was recently named head of National Business, UK, at BHSI.
Merton comes to BHSI with more than two decades of London Market & UK insurance industry experience focused on business development and production. Merton joins BHSI from Chaucer Syndicates where she held various positions for nine years, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She is based in London and can be reached at Fiona.Merton@bhspecialty.com.