Fidelis hires Symms to lead outwards reinsurance & quota shares

Fidelis Insurance, the specialty insurance and reinsurance firm launched by Richard Brindle, has announced a new senior hire as it continues to build its expertise in outwards reinsurance and especially quota shares.

John Symms is joining Fidelis as its Head of Outwards Reinsurance, a role which will see him tasked with expanding the firms reinsurance partnerships and its quota share arrangements, across multiple lines of business.

Symms joins Fidelis in this new role from his most recent position with London focused player and Validus/AIG owned Talbot Underwriting, where he worked for 16 years spending most of his time placing and managing outwards reinsurance. Prior to that he worked at now defunct Reliance National for 10 years, underwriting, buying and managing reinsurance.

Fidelis highlights its quota share activity as “increasingly important” to the firm, an area where it is tapping the capital markets for reinsurance and capacity support using its Socium third-party capital platform.

Symms will work closely with Phil Vandoninck, CEO of Socium at Fidelis, the partnerships Pillar and where third-party capital activities including management of its Socium Re collateralised reinsurance sidecar vehicle take place.

He will have responsibility for coordinating all aspects of Fidelis’ engagement with reinsurance capital across all segments of the business, so this will include the firms interactions with the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, ILS funds and third-party investors.

Richard Brindle, Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer of Fidelis, commented on the hire, “Fidelis sets great value on its reinsurance relationships and this appointment is a demonstration of our commitment to provide best in class service and transparency to our partners. John will work alongside Phil Vandoninck and our underwriting, actuarial and analytics teams to ensure we provide excellent support to our brokers and reinsurers.”

John Symms added, “I am excited to join Fidelis, it is clear that outwards reinsurance relationships are of paramount importance to the company and are an essential part of their growth plans. I understand Fidelis devotes extensive resources to provide cutting edge tools for outwards analysis and reporting and I’m looking forward to utilising the tools to provide market leading information to our partners.”

Phil Vandoninck also said, “Fidelis has a large number of reinsurance partners over 20 classes of business. This requires us to focus resources on the entire outwards process from broker and counterparty selection to placement and reporting. John’s extensive experience and relationships can only help us to develop further and offer a better service to our reinsurers.”