While space insurers lick their wounds after claims totalling more that US$500 million were made in late April and May (the Mexsat-1 Proton launch failure, the Egyptsat 2 in-orbit loss, and the Soyuz launch damage-induced loss of Progress M-027M), insurers also had to account for some industry moves.
In May, XL Group plc announced the completion of its merger of Catlin which was started in January. The new joint firm is marketing itself as XL Catlin effective 4 May 2015. It has not been disclosed how this will affect the space insurance underwriting business within the joint firm though for the time being the USA-based space team (formerly XL) and the UK-based space team (formerly Catlin) are being left in place.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated move, Dr Sima Adhya, space underwriter at Torus is leaving to join the Hamilton Insurance Group. At the time of writing her space underwriting colleagues at Torus, Michael Thorp and Jon Ashby, were set to follow her.
Other market moves include Neil Fleming, who was with the space underwriting team at underwriter Sciemus, is moving to AIG. While space underwriter Ben Spain has made a “poacher turned gamekeeper” move from Global Aerospace Underwriting Managers to the broker JLT.
