Lexington takes E&S property exec from Chubb

Lexington Insurance Company has hired Brendan Duffy from rival Chubb to lead its brokerage property team in the western zone of the US, The Insurer can reveal.

The San Francisco, California-based Duffy joined AIG’s excess and surplus lines-focussed subsidiary Lexington last month as property zonal Manager – western region, this publication has learned.

He had previously been a senior underwriter for Chubb, specialising in writing large real estate and municipality accounts that have significant catastrophe exposure. His time with Chubb also saw him serve the carrier’s own E&S platform Westchester, according to Duffy’s LinkedIn profile.

Duffy began his insurance industry career with Arch.

The new arrival comes five weeks after this publication revealed that Lexington had hired Ella Broks from Swiss Re Corporate Solutions as national director of business development.

The New York-based Broks had been with Swiss Re Corporate Solutions for more than seven years, most recently as head of sales for its E&S business.

In joining Lexington, Duffy has joined a company that has refocussed its business model in the past 18 months with the carrier having switched its focus from a retail to wholesale model.

At the same time, Lexington now targets more middle market business and less of the large complex risk accounts that it had written previously.

Lexington, which is led by CEO Lou Levinson, has also undertaken broader remediation efforts that have seen it slash the limits it is prepared to offer and push hard on price.

The tighter underwriting stance at Lexington has been widely cited as one of the key drivers in the significant hardening in the E&S market since the beginning of 2019.