30 July 2014News

Markel plans expansion in Dubai

Markel International, the specialist insurer, has requested to the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) that it establish a company to operate within the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).

Providing the plan goes ahead, Markel’s business will be located within the Lloyd’s offices in the DIFC and will initially focus on offering trade credit covers. The development follows the expansion of the trade credit division to New York in July this year.

Ewa Rose, managing director of Markel’s trade credit division, says: “There has been an increasing amount of business opportunity through the Middle East for our trade credit insurance product which we launched in London in 2010. We have since introduced the product in Singapore, Munich and New York but the Middle East has been a missing part of the jigsaw.”

Simon Wilson, director of international development at Markel International, says: “Timing of the next steps is clearly in the hands of the Dubai regulators but we would hope to be in a position to be trading by the end of this year.

He concludes, “The Lloyd’s Middle East platform proposal is a move which we support, especially if it can replicate what has been done in Singapore. We are very much aligned with what Lloyd’s is doing.”