Aon hires Bale in Risk Settlement, deepens longevity risk expertise

Aon has hired Steve Bale from Legal & General to join its Risk Settlement team, the area of the brokerage that focuses on life and pension risk transfer, including longevity swaps and reinsurance.

Bale has more than 19 years of experience in the life insurance and pensions sector, with the last seven spent at Legal & General where he was most recently a prudential risk actuary working on large UK and U.S. pension risk transfer deals.

Before that, Bale was head of longevity risk at the firm, leading delivery and approval of pricing, reporting and capital longevity proposals for UK and U.S. annuitants.

Bale joins Aon as a principal consultant and will work across the Risk Settlement business, but also coordinate with Aon’s broader life insurance and reinsurance operations, including at Aon Benfield.

Martin Bird, senior partner at Aon Hewitt and head of the Risk Settlement group, commented; “Steve Bale is an excellent fit for Aon‘s growing Risk Settlement team, particularly as we expand across the life assurance and reinsurance markets.

“Steve will work across the Risk Settlement group and also with the growing Life team in Aon Benfield. We are seeing great opportunities to use our deep technical longevity expertise and knowledge of structuring complex deals, alongside the other insurance and reinsurance capabilities within the wider Aon group.”

Colin Dutkiewicz, Head of Life Reinsurance, EMEA at Aon Benfield, added; “We continue to see strong demand for capital balance sheet optimisation strategies, particularly following the introduction of the Solvency II regime. Steve’s experience and skills are a natural fit as we further expand across the region.”

Bale has also chaired the Continuous Mortality Investigation’s (CMI) High Age Mortality Working Party and held a position in its Mortality Projections Committee.