By James Thaler

March 3 - (The Insurer) - Aon management have said incoming reinsurance chief executive John Neal checked all the boxes of what the firm was looking for in a candidate, which included understanding the ongoing evolution of risk capital, global experience and broad industry relationships.

Speaking to The Insurer, Aon president Eric Andersen and Risk Capital CEO Andy Marcell, who previously led Aon’s reinsurance arm, detailed their vision for Neal in the role.

As previously reported, Lloyd’s CEO Neal is set to join Aon in the role once he has completed his notice period, and will report to Marcell.

The move brought to an end a prolonged search for a new reinsurance CEO at the intermediary, with Marcell having continued to oversee the division after his appointment to the new Risk Capital position in May 2023 with the unit’s formation.

Marcell said Aon had been “comfortable” with the reinsurance leadership team it has had in place across regions, customer segments, products and analytics.

However, after rolling out the Risk Capital model almost two years ago, Aon management knew the reinsurance business needed a day-to-day leader to bring “focus” to the division’s management and “see the value for the future”.

“Certainly his resume is fantastic, but he's also a really good guy,” Andersen said of the incoming Neal.

The Aon president said discussions among senior management about the approach the firm wanted to take with reinsurance and the topic of climate revolved around the firm’s Risk Capital strategy and culture.

“A lot of it is culture,” he commented. “The success of risk capital is really the ability to work across the firm.

“You can structurally set that up, but to make it actually work, you need people that like to do it,” he continued.

“And John sees that, he sees the need and all that. He's the kind of person that wants to work across the business, which I think was what made it such an easy (hire) in terms of how our teams reacted,” Andersen explained.

'ABILITY TO OPEN DOORS'

Marcell laid out the challenges in finding a reinsurance broking CEO candidate, which he said came down to identifying an executive with industry relationships and “the ability to open doors and articulate what we're trying to accomplish in reinsurance”.

“But also (for) that person to be able to think about the evolution that's happening in risk capital, around distribution, around access to capital and have that global experience,” Marcell explained.

Neal, he said, checked all of those boxes, having extensive management experience from leading QBE as its CEO, as well as his tenure running Lloyd’s.

“You can't really imagine anyone that could bring better tools to the party than John,” Marcell said, adding that Neal brings to the role a complementary skill set with the “highly respected” Joe Peiser running commercial risk solutions.

“And so putting those two together with our management team at Aon, and embedding that in the three by three, that particular aspect was very attractive to John. He’s actually going to look across risk in all its dimensions,” Marcell said.

DEEP TIES IN THE REALM OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Andersen highlighted Neal’s engagement on the topic of climate change in his role leading Lloyd’s, where he interacted with governments and other major global organisations on the topic.

“He's been very involved with the sustainable markets initiative, and the like. Aon has had a lot of energy put towards building tools and capabilities and products and solutions that help on climate resilience,” he commented.

An area Andersen said Aon has not invested to the same degree is “the relationships you need with that whole new set of clients”, including island nations, cities and governments.

“John brings that in spades. And so he will advance us by a decade the relationships that you need to create,” he noted.

He added that the firm plans to support Neal in work done around climate and invest in the area, which he said would enable it to deliver solutions “much faster”.

Andersen and Marcell’s comments regarding Neal’s hire came alongside in-depth comments to The Insurer about the firm’s Risk Capital strategy.

The pair detailed how they expect the company is poised to win an analytics “arms race” with other intermediaries through its $1 billion investment in its data platform, and by bringing reinsurance analytics downstream to commercial risk clients.