Markel eyes growth in specialty programmes with new hire

Markel Corporation has named a new senior director for its specialty programmes business.

Helen Xu joins Markel to lead triaging and onboarding new programmes and portfolio management for the existing and newly delegated programmes for the Markel Specialty division.

She was most recently at QBE North America where she was vice president of programme due diligence and programme management, which included building analytical models and profit and loss responsibility for newly launched programmes.

Before that she was at Chubb, serving as Westchester programmes strategy analysis and senior programme manager. She has more than 20 years of industry experience in total.

Xu will report to Jeff Lamb, executive director for programmes and alliances at Markel Specialty. She is based in New Jersey.

Lamb described Xu as “a collaborative leader with fluency in programme strategy, triaging, onboarding, due diligence, data and analytics, and program portfolio management.”

He added: “Markel has been in the programme space for more than 40 years. With improved market conditions, we have been able to work with a robust pipeline of opportunities and in a position to increase our programme implementation,” said Lamb.