Allied World hires new SVP with capital markets background

Insurance, reinsurance and financial services group Allied World Assurance Company Holdings, AG are one of a number of firms who have been quietly establishing a range a partnerships which seem designed to help the group come to terms with and embrace the third-party reinsurance capital management trend. Now the group have announced a new hire into a senior SVP role which will be responsible for investor relations, capital raising and management activities.

Allied World has announced that Sarah Doran has been appointed Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Ms. Doran joins Allied World from Barclays where she held a role as a Director in the Financial Institutions Group and was responsible for executing strategic transactions including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and capital raising for the insurance and reinsurance industry. Before her time at Barclays, Doran held a role as Vice President in the Financial Institutions Group at Lehman Brothers.

Doran will be based in Allied World’s office in New York and will report directly to CFO Thomas Bradley.  Ms. Doran takes over responsibility for investor relations from Keith Lennox, who has been recently been appointed to Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer for Allied World’s reinsurance business.

Mr. Bradley commented, “We are excited that Sarah has joined the Allied World finance team and I personally look forward to working with her in her new role.  Her extensive experience covering financial institutions and her knowledge of the insurance market will be a valuable asset as she works with investors and analysts to highlight Allied World’s business strategy. I am confident that she will meet with much success here.”

Allied World has put a number of initiatives and partnerships in place which position it well to make the most of the third-party capital interest in the reinsurance space. First it formed a strategic partnership with MatlinPatterson to expand its asset management business and opportunities. Next it acquired a minority stake in Aeolus Capital Management Ltd., a Bermuda-based asset manager who manage investors third-party capital to invest in property catastrophe reinsurance and retrocession on a collateralized basis. Finally it acquired a minority stake in asset manager Crescent Capital Group LP which saw Crescent manage $500m of Allied World’s investment portfolio.

Through these moves Allied World has positioned itself to be able to take on third-party capital, deploy it and asset manage as well. In this way it has positioned itself almost like a hedge-fund backed reinsurer, but more importantly as an insurance and reinsurance group with the ability to manage third-party capital. This latest hire can only help Allied World’s capital management ambitions.