Allianz AGCS shuffles market-facing leadership in ‘pivot to growth’ strategy

Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE, the corporate insurance carrier of  Allianz Group, has shuffled its leadership team with high-profile external hires and internal promotions as part of its portfolio turnaround and wider business transformation strategy.

The move aims to bolster its market-facing executive positions in its regional management, underwriting and risk consulting functions to support the company’s ‘pivot to growth’ agenda over the next few years.

Alfredo Alonso (pictured) who currently leads AGCS’ regional unit London & Nordics will become global head of liability with immediate effect. Contributing 20 percent to AGCS’s global premium volume in 2020, the liability line of business is the largest underwriting unit at AGCS.

Alonso will be succeeded in May 2022 by Nadia Côté who joins AGCS as the new regional managing director for London & Nordics from her current role as head of major accounts Europe and international broking distribution for Chubb. Alonso will remain based in London and, in the interim, will retain his regional responsibility for London & Nordics in addition to his liability leadership role.

Gianluca Piscopo will be appointed regional managing director for the Ibero/LatAm region, also effective from May 2022. In this role he will succeed Nuno Antunes who continues to oversee the Ibero/LatAm region until the handover next year and will then move to a new role which will be confirmed in due course. Piscopo is currently CEO for WR Berkley Spain & Portugal. He will continue to be based in Madrid.

AGCS has also appointed a new global head of energy & construction Max Benz. He will join in February 2022. Benz was previously AXA XL’s global chief underwriting officer (CUO) for construction as well as regional product CUO construction for Asia Pacific & Europe. He will drive further growth opportunities for the energy & construction line of business which generated about 13 percent of AGCS’s gross written premium in 2020.

Finally, Michele Williams will take over as global head of Allianz Risk Consulting (ARC) in Munich with immediate effect from Thierry Portevin who is leaving AGCS to pursue interests outside Allianz. She started at AGCS in 2004, working in various risk consulting and underwriting roles, and most recently led the CEO Office for AGCS CEO Joachim Mueller in Munich.

Côté and Piscopo, as regional managing directors, will report to Henning Haagen, AGCS’ chief regions & markets officer; Benz and Williams will report to Tony Buckle, AGCS’ chief underwriting officer, corporate.

AGCS chief executive officer Mueller said: “As our portfolio turnaround and wider business transformation program advance as planned and we pivot to growth again, we are pleased to attract top talents for these core positions, all of which are directly connected to our customer-facing activities. It’s a good balance of talented members of our internal team and high-profile external hires. I look forward to working with these energetic managers – both familiar and new colleagues – to drive our ambitious transformation and growth agenda over the next years.”

Did you get value from this story?  Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.