The latest insurance name added to the fast-growing U.S. team roster of Bermuda-based Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd. belongs to 34-year veteran Mario Vitale, who is the "right choice in the current market," according to the group's chief executive.
John Cavoores, co-CEO of the insurance division of Aspen Insurance, believes the experience Mr. Vitale accumulated from prior soft-market battles gives Aspen an edge as it builds for the next market turn.
"He has made profits through market cycles, and that's exactly the kind of guidance we need to give our teams in the United States as they develop their plans going forward," Mr. Cavoores said of Mr. Vitale, who joins Aspen as president of Aspen U.S. Insurance from Zurich Financial Services, where he held the title CEO, Global Corporate.
Prior to joining Zurich in 2006, Mr. Vitale served with the global broker Willis Group Holdings for six years and as CEO of Willis North America for four, after many years with Reliance National.
Mr. Cavoores, who like Mr. Vitale has more than 30 years under his belt with prior stints at OneBeacon, American International Group and Chubb, spoke to NU a day after Aspen announced Mr. Vitale's hiring and a day before a new team of surety experts came on board.
Rounding out the leadership team of Aspen's insurance businesses is co-CEO Rupert Villers in London, a veteran who co-founded Novae Holdings, which operates at Lloyd's, who joined Aspen in April 2009.
With nearly a century of market-cycle experience combined, "the three of us have enough scars on our backs to know when it's time to pull back and when it's time to be more aggressive," Mr. Cavoores said.
Hinting at the surety announcement to come, he referred to it as an example of a building effort in the U.S. specialty insurance market that started to take hold in late 2009. Rattling off names of the professionals like Bruce Eisler, who previously ran the professional liability operation for Liberty Mutual, and Adam Schnell, who had run the New York casualty operation for ACE Westchester, Mr. Cavoores listed these men and the teams they brought to Aspen among six that came on board in just over a year.
Asked why Aspen is ramping up in the U.S. insurance segment as competitors like RenaissanceRe pull back (see page 22), he said the activities don't represent "a traditional insurance ramp-up."
"It's quite the opposite. It's just investing capital, investing in people—entering with a toe in the water rather than both feet and positioning the company to do well," he said.
"We're actually being very prudent with growth strategies," he continued, explaining, for example, that in lines such as directors and officers liability, Aspen currently writes excess layers but is poised to move aggressively down to primary layers when pricing makes sense.
Mr. Cavoores also discussed recent remedial actions to repair some past missteps in growing the U.S. insurance book and future distribution plans. See the March 14 edition of NU's eNewsletter Specialty Markets Insights or the E&S/Specialty channel of our website, www.propertycasualty360.com, for interview details and a list of key executives recently hired by Aspen.
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