UK General's rebranded commercial arm makes trio of hires

One Commercial, the rebranded commercial arm of MGA UK General has made three new appointments to strengthen its regional presence and support its expansion plans.

Jim Bowles has joined as regional sales manager for Scotland. He previously worked at NIG where he was a senior business development manager in Glasgow.

Karen Halpin is the new regional sales manager for Northern Ireland. She joins from Marsh in Dublin where she was a placement broker and has more than 15 years’ experience in the broking sector.

At One Commercial, she will be responsible for continuing the broker development work begun by the current Belfast team, with additional responsibilities at UK General Group’s Dublin-based insurance company.

Alexandra Price joins the commercial team as marketing executive to support the growth of One Commercial, its rebrand and business development.

She joins One Commercial from KPMG where she managed its Yorkshire marketing and events programme for seven years.

UK General’s commercial division rebranded itself as One Commercial on 1 June as it also announced that it wanted to expand its underwriting footprint to write business outside the risk appetite of its main capacity provider, XL Catlin.

One Commercial managing director Mike Keating said the rebrand underlined the commercial division’s exclusive focus on doing business with regional independent brokers.

“Finding and hiring high quality and experienced people who are passionate about the regional independent broker market is essential to us,” Keating said.

“Karen is a great addition to the business and will play an active role in our expansion in both the Irish and Northern Ireland markets,” he said, adding that: “With Jim, we now have additional resource to support fully our Scottish brokers in view of our continued success in this key territory and our growth aspirations. And Alexandra brings blue chip brand marketing experience to our new venture.”