Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE (AGCS) is strengthening its leadership team to support the company’s ‘pivot to growth’, following its successful remediation program. It is attracting both internal talent as well as high-profile external hires to executive positions in its regional management, underwriting and risk consulting functions, all in market-facing roles.
Executive appointments for regional management, underwriting and risk consulting roles
New Regional Managing Directors for Regional Units London and Ibero/LatAm: Nadia Côté and Gianluca Piscopo
New Global Heads for Liability and Energy & Construction lines of business: Alfredo Alonso and Max Benz
New Global Head for Allianz Risk Consulting: Michele Williams
Alfredo Alonso who currently leads AGCS’ Regional Unit London & Nordics will become Global Head of Liability with immediate effect. Contributing 20% to AGCS’s global premium volume in 2020, the Liability line of business is the largest underwriting unit at AGCS. Alonso will be succeeded in May 2022 by Nadia Côté who joins AGCS as the new Regional Managing Director for London & Nordics from her current role as Head of Major Accounts Europe and International Broking Distribution for Chubb. Alonso will remain based in London and, in the interim, will retain his regional responsibility for London & Nordics in addition to his Liability leadership role.
Gianluca Piscopo will be appointed Regional Managing Director for the Ibero/LatAm region, also effective from May 2022. In this role he will succeed Nuno Antunes who continues to oversee the Ibero/LatAm region until the handover next year and will then move to a new role which will be confirmed in due course. Piscopo is currently CEO for W.R. Berkley Spain & Portugal. He will continue to be based in Madrid.
AGCS has also appointed a new Global Head of Energy & Construction, Max Benz. He will join in February 2022. Benz was previously AXA XL’s Global Chief Underwriting Officer (CUO) for Construction as well as Regional Product CUO Construction for Asia Pacific & Europe. He will drive further growth opportunities for the Energy & Construction line of business which generated about 13% of AGCS’s gross written premium in 2020.
Michele Williams will take over as Global Head of Allianz Risk Consulting (ARC) in Munich with immediate effect from Thierry Portevin who leaves AGCS to pursue interests outside Allianz. She started at AGCS in 2004, working in various Risk Consulting and Underwriting roles, and most recently led the CEO Office for AGCS CEO Joachim Mueller in Munich. With over 280 staff spread across 24 locations worldwide, ARC’s risk engineers and industry experts provide a wide range of risk consulting services to AGCS customers, as well as advising underwriters on technical risk issues. This setup presents a unique opportunity to create customer value and support the company’s plans to grow in its target segments and markets.
Côté and Piscopo, as Regional Managing Directors, will report to Henning Haagen, AGCS’ Chief Regions & Markets Officer; Benz and Williams will report to Tony Buckle, AGCS’ Chief Underwriting Officer, Corporate.
AGCS CEO Joachim Mueller comments on the leadership changes: “As our portfolio turnaround and wider business transformation program advance as planned and we pivot to growth again, we are pleased to attract top talents for these core positions, all of which are directly connected to our customer-facing activities. It’s a good balance of talented members of our internal team and high-profile external hires and talented members of our internal team. I look forward to working with these energetic managers – both familiar and new colleagues – to drive our ambitious transformation and growth agenda over the next years.”
These appointments are subject to regulatory approval, where relevant.
Source: Allianz.com