Chubb’s Kirk retains top marine London underwriter position for third year running

Chubb’s David Kirk has retained top position in the 2023 London’s Leading Underwriter Ranking for marine, his third consecutive win, with the overall Chubb marine team placing second in the class.

Kirk has served as head of marine at Chubb Global Markets since July 2022, having previously been deputy head of marine and product head for marine cargo at Syndicate 2488.

The ranking is a peer nomination-based survey conducted by Insurindex, a joint venture between insurance research consultancy Gracechurch and Brandex.

This marks only the second time an individual underwriter has held the top spot in their class for three consecutive years, Gracechurch noted.

Kirk also placed fourth in this year’s overall ranking of London underwriters.

New entrants Andrew Moulton and Iain Henstridge from Ascot and Apollo respectively took joint second place for the marine class, having also appeared on the overall ranking in eighth and ninth place respectively.

Moulton, a marine hull underwriter, is part of the Ascot team that took the joint top position in the marine bench strength ratings along with Bezley.

Beazley’s head of marine hull and war Richard Young took fifth place in the individual marine underwriter rankings, having held the role since September 2017.

Returning to the shortlist for the first time since 2018 was Clive Washbourn, CEO of Navium. The Navium team took joint fifth position along with IQUW, Apollo, Liberty Specialty Markets and Markel.

Elsewhere, Brit’s divisional director Brian Randall took the top spot as leading individual energy underwriter, improving on previous highest ranking of sixth in 2019.

The Brit team placed third in the class, an unchanged ranking from last year’s survey.

CNA Hardy took the leading rank for energy bench strength rating following a five-year absence from the shortlist. The firm assumed the top spot from Munich Re, who did not appear on the list.

Clive Magnus, assistant VP of energy and power at CNA Hardy, took second place in the individual energy underwriter rankings.

Third place in bench strength rating was shared by Brit, Markel and Travelers, with Travelers’ head of power and utilities Louis Scott in third place and Markel International’s energy director Ben House in fifth.

Steve Hawkins, who has served as head of energy at Convex since October 2019, was the sole individual energy underwriter to appear on the list from last year.

The Convex energy team remained unchanged from the prior year survey in second place.

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