Specialist Risk Group has appointed Neil Nimmo as its chief executive officer, UK. The intermediary was founded by Warren Downey and Lee Anderson in 2019 and is backed by Warburg Pincus and Temasek. Most recently, Nimmo was chairman of broker Lockton. He will oversee SRG’s retail, wholesale and underwriting pillars in the UK.

Verisk Specialty Business Solutions, part of data analytics and technology provider Verisk, has designed and launched an underwriting platform for the London Market. Verisk Specialty Business Solutions said the technology was scalable and its API enablement meant it could be integrated with existing re/insurer systems. Speciality re/insurer IQUW is the first carrier to implement the platform.

Folgate Underwriting has upped the total sum insured available per location to £70m and said its increased line size could now cater for hotels as well as wholesale and distribution risks. Folgate launched its real estate proposition at the end of 2024.

ARAG plc has reported gross written premium of £77.8m for the 2024 financial year, up from the £66.1m it achieved the previous year. Profit before tax was £1.8m in 2024, more than double the £0.8m returned in 2023. The firm said this was its final set of results before completing the integration with the DAS UK business.

Speciality re/insurer Canopius Group has agreed to sell a further 21% of its equity to Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, which will take its shareholding to 40%. The stock has been bought from existing shareholders Fidentia Fortuna Holdings, which is led by US private equity firm, Centerbridge Partners.

Applied Systems has announced that it will withdraw its broker management platform Applied Epic from the UK market. The firm said it would support customers on existing contracts and said other products such as Applied TAM, Applied Rating Hub services, and Applied Riskhandler would not be affected.

Research from software company RDT has found that claims handlers overwhelmingly believe automated claims systems should still have human oversight. While 86% of handlers said automation could improve the overall customer experience by delivering faster and more accurate outcomes, 92% said human oversight was either essential or important. Only 3% said they would be happy for human oversight to be removed completely.

Speciality insurer Beazley has appointed Stefan Wunderlich as head of parametric insurance as it seeks to develop its proposition in the property market. Wunderlich joins from Swiss Re where he spent two decades and helped develop parametric solutions for corporate clients and led teams providing guidance on climate risk exposures for clients.

Half of UK businesses (53%) with between 100 and 2,000 employees have been affected by a cyber attack in the past year, according to research from QBE. For 16% of affected businesses, resulting disruption from an attack lasted a day or more. The data found that of those experiencing cyber attacks, 59% said that at least one of them was linked to a supplier.

Leicester Crown Court has sentenced a family of fraudsters for their respective roles in committing motor insurance fraud. Ilyas Rauf was sentenced to 21 months in prison for fraud by false representation. His son Amer Ilyas was sentenced to 16 weeks imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid work. He had admitted to money laundering offences. His brother Ziaed Rauf was sentenced to 18 weeks imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to complete 120 hours of unpaid work for perverting the course of justice.

Insurance premium finance provider PremFina has signed an agreement for a £350m private securitisation facility from HSBC and Waterfall Asset Management. The funding will support £1.9bn in premium finance volumes, with £1bn already contracted.

The Association of British Insurers has announced that Chris Bose will join the professional body as director of general insurance and international on 11th August. He joins from Nationwide Building Society where he led the policy and public affairs function.

The Financial Conduct Authority has identified further returns that it says are not necessary, following the launch of its consultation (CP25/13) to remove unnecessary data reporting for regulated firms. For general insurance firms, this includes form REP022 (General Insurance Pricing Attestation).

At the end of May, M&A activity in the UK general insurance market was 30% down on last year with just seven announced deals during the month. Publishing the data, consultancy MarshBerry said that in addition to a reduced number of transactions, the deals in 2025 had also been relatively small.

Adam Kembrooke has launched London-based managing general agent Amiga Specialty with backing from investors including BP Marsh & Partners. Amiga said it planned to scale its operations through acquisition and organic growth. Kembrooke was previously CEO of Nexus US and prior to that co-founded PartnerRe Wholesale.

Digital distributor Starpeak has extended its partnership with niche commercial insurer Peach to include property cover in its hairdressing proposition. The scheme was launched in 2019 under Starpeak’s Protectivity brand and Peach took on the underwriting in 2022.