Ageas makes senior hires to support commercial lines expansion

Ageas has made senior appointments as part of an ongoing restructure to its commercial lines operations.

Ageas has said it is targeting organic growth in UK commercial lines, with a particular focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and the fleet sector.

Beth Shaw is joining Ageas as commercial underwriting manager – North.

She will replace business services manager Brenda Rickards, who is retiring from the business in June.

In her new role Shaw will be responsible for driving the development and trading of open market manual business for the North. She joins from Zurich where she spent 15 years in various underwriting roles.

The insurer has also appointed Andrew Fletcher as commercial fleet trading manager.

Based in Manchester, he will be responsible for growing the fleet account - a key strategic product line for Ageas’s commercial offering.

Fletcher joins Ageas from Endsleigh where he is currently portfolio manager.

As part of the commercial lines reorganisation, Allison Hughes will transfer from Ageas’s distribution team to take on the role of commercial digital trading manager.

Under plans to expand the commercial lines business Ageas will focus on three areas.

• Allison’s team will focus on the brokers’ digital journey, how to improve their use of Ageas’s website and how to simplify the sales process.

• The Open Market manual traded business team (which includes fleet) will be split in two. Shaw will lead the Manchester based team, supporting brokers based in the North while Janine Hann will become commercial underwriting manager for the South. She will lead the Gloucester based team with a regional trading focus on brokers based in the South;

• The schemes division will continue to be led by David Bailey.

Ageas head of commercial underwriting and operations Cathy Taylor said: “Andrew, Beth and Allison have a wealth of knowledge and experience, which combined with the existing expertise, provides a really strong team to confidently drive our commercial lines business forward.

“Expanding the digital team means we can respond promptly to broker enquiries to save them time, money and to increase their revenue stream. We are open for business and have some innovative plans to deliver in the future.”