Palomar promotes CTO Morries to chief operating officer

US specialty insurer Palomar Holdings has appointed Britt Morries to chief operating officer (COO) succeeding Jon Christianson, who recently assumed the role of chief underwriting officer (CUO).

Morries has served as chief technology officer since joining the company in August 2017. He will continue to serve in this role while the company initiates a search for his replacement.

Prior to joining Palomar, Morries was chief technology officer of Wellbeats, and served in senior management roles at John B. Collins Associates and Aon.

Mac Armstrong, chairman and chief executive officer of Palomar, said: “Britt has been a driver of change and operational improvement since he joined Palomar as our Chief Technology Officer in 2017. He has built our technology team, platform, and infrastructure from the ground up, enabling Palomar to leverage technology to both scale and effectively service our policyholders. It is appropriate that Britt will remain actively focused on our technology until an appropriate candidate has been determined to succeed him in this capacity. He brings a creative and dynamic mindset that will help drive us toward our strategic growth and expansion goals, as the spirit of innovation is core to Palomar’s success as a leading specialty property insurer. Britt will work with myself and the senior leadership team in his capacity supporting our growth initiatives.”

Morries commented: “I am very excited to assume the Chief Operating Officer leadership role. At Palomar we have built our platform on digitizing business processes in an agile fashion and automation. It enables us to gain additional efficiencies and increase our processing bandwidth, whilst empowering us to accelerate our growth and expand product offering. Further our technology allows us to continue to build services integrations with our partner companies, agencies and carriers. Integrating the Operations and Technology teams will provide even more synergy moving forward. I am eager to continue the journey with the exceptional team that we have here at Palomar.”