’Schemes is central to our growth ambitions and I’m confident the team will continue to thrive,’ says UK chief distribution officer

Specialist insurer Hiscox has appointed Tasha Pettet as its new UK head of schemes. 

Pettet will join in July to lead Hiscox’s 40-strong schemes team. She will report into UK chief distribution officer Gareth Hemming and be based in London. 

The new appointee joins from Chubb, where she was most recently head of digital underwriting and product development for Chubb Overseas General’s Digital Commercial Insurance division. 

Commenting on the appointment, Hemming said: “[Pettet] will be repsonsible for driving growth in our schemes business with a particular focus on exploiting automaion and digital technologies. 

“Schemes is central to our growth ambitions and I’m confident the team will continue to thrive under [her] leadership.” 

Schemes within schemes

Speaking exclusively to Insurance Times at the end of last year (December 2023), Hiscox UK chief executive Jon Dye explained that the insurer was looking to “double down” on its schemes business.

As part of this, Dye explained that it was seeking for someone to drive schemes growth as the head of schemes, with Pettet representing the culmination of that search.

The broker schemes business at Hiscox – accouning for around 25% of its broker traded revenues – remains ringfenced in a central London location, but has access to each of Hiscox’s trading regions to provide specialist support. 

Dye added: “Schemes is very well placed to grow in the immediate future and we have a fantastic pipeline of opportunities that we’re keen to add to whenever we can.”