Covéa Insurance continues to build Commercial Lines team with further senior underwriting appointments

Covéa Insurance announces further investment in its Commercial Lines underwriting team, with the appointment of three senior underwriters.

Richard Heathcote has been appointed to the role of Senior Trading Underwriter, Property Owners and joins from AXA bringing with him 25 years of underwriting experience. Building on the successful growth of Covéa Insurance’s property owners portfolio, Richard will focus on supporting the company’s 8 regional underwriting teams across all major UK insurance markets.

Mark Docherty has been appointed Senior Mid-Market Underwriter and joins with 25 years experience in commercial underwriting. Having previously held roles at Zurich and RSA, he has a wealth of experience in complex casualty business and will utilise his solid technical and trading background to define the company’s mid-market proposition.

Paul Hodgson, Director, Commercial Underwriting & Business Operations commented:

“Mark and Richard’s roles will both be broker facing, as we are absolutely focused on providing our trading partners easy access to empowered underwriters. We understand how important this is to our partners; in a recently survey 94% of the brokers we asked stated that 'access to decision-making underwriters' was the most important factor to them when choosing their insurance provider”.

Adeel Qureshi has been appointed as Senior Technical Underwriter, Property and joins from RSA with 11 years' international experience underwriting property exposures. In his new role, Adeel will focus on delivering technical underwriting material to enable the company to write larger, more complex property risks, further adding to the company’s existing underwriting capabilities in this sector.

Paul concludes:

“These senior appointments demonstrate our on-going commitment to building and developing our underwriting capabilities and ensuring that we are creating the right platform to write a broader footprint of regional brokers’ business.”

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About Covéa Insurance

Covéa Insurance Plc is the UK underwriting business of leading French mutual insurance group Covéa (which includes the global reinsurer PartnerRe since July 2022). 

Covéa Insurance looks after the insurance needs of UK customers, across a range of product lines; delivering financial reassurance through its Standard & Poor’s ‘AA- stable’ rating, as a guaranteed subsidiary of Covéa.  

Covéa Insurance has a strong people and service ethos and holds ServiceMark accreditation with Distinction for its Personal Lines operation and its Commercial & HNW Claims teams, as well as Chartered Insurer status for its Commercial business. Covéa Insurance is signatory to the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter and the insurance Inclusivity Pledge and has been named one of the top 75 employers in West Yorkshire & the Humber. In 2022 Covéa Insurance was named Insurer of the Year at the British Claims Awards and Personal Lines Insurer of the Year at the Insurance Times Awards.