Market moves: Busy brokers

A great big shock at the forefront of Market moves this month, with the news that Aviva’s Janice Deakin left the insurer to join Arthur J Gallagher. And the broker market in general was pretty busy, with several regional appointments and a couple of senior departures from Swinton and Brightside. Evolution Group made a string of internal promotions (see box), with Paul Upton moving up to the group CEO position and, overall, companies seemed to adopt a pack mentality last month, with a few clear trends emerging. For insurers it was adding to their distribution teams – Hiscox, LV and Covéa all got on that bandwagon. With brokers, newly-created roles were flavour of the month at Giles, Romero and Bluefin. On both sides of the market, regional appointments were popular, with Ace and Liberty Mutual hiring in Glasgow and Manchester respectively, and Bluefin, Bollington and Henderson Insurance Brokers Teesside busy adding staff across the UK. Happily a couple of brokers welcomed past staff members back, with Oamps seeing the return of Paul Beck after a two-year absence. Truly heartwarming stuff.

There was one name and one name only that dominated market moves conversations last month – Janice.

So well-known, and, it appears, universally well-liked, was Aviva’s intermediary and partnerships director Janice Deakin, that in the tradition of Elvis, Beyoncé and Oprah, she is known by her first name alone.

In a surprise (to most of the market) announcement last month it was revealed that Ms Deakin was leaving Aviva, after 13 years, to join Arthur J Gallagher International (AJGI) as UK