DARAG Group has made several senior appointments with Alastair Lauder as group chief actuary, Ciaran Russell as senior actuary, Vivek Bhandari as head of data, Matt Watson as group head of IT and Alastair Whitfield as group head of investments. Based in London, Lauder most recently served as Syndicate Actuary at Arch (formerly Barbican) Managing Agency, where he led the reserving team and oversaw the capital modelling and pricing for Syndicate 1955. Prior to that, Lauder was at Lane Clark & Peacock where he worked on reserving for various London market clients focused on worldwide commercial casualty and medical malpractice. He is a particular advocate of using technology to make actuarial processes as efficient as possible and believes that more focus is needed on data quality within the insurance sector and the actuarial profession. Russell will serve as senior actuary in DARAG North America. Based in Bermuda, he worked most recently as an actuary at ILS Investment Management in Bermuda where he had direct experience with legacy transactions, having prior to this worked for seven years at Aspen, performing roles including product and pricing actuary. Bhandari was most recently a data warehouse consultant at Siemens Financial Services and has extensive data warehouse experience. Watson was the former group head of IT at Armour Risk Management. He brings both technical and strategic experience to DARAG, including the management and delivery of IT infrastructure projects, cybersecurity and post-deal integration of systems. Whitfield will help manage the DARAG’s asset portfolios, which are primarily managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He joins DARAG from RBC Wealth Management where he was head of fixed income, UK. Prior to that, Whitfield worked at Chubb Insurance as portfolio manager, co-managing the company’s multi-billion dollar international asset base. Commenting on the new senior appointments, Tom Booth, group CEO of DARAG, says: “As DARAG continues to expand globally, these senior hires reflect the successful growth and maturity of the Group as well as its ambition and innovation. These highly experienced and skilled staff will lead the continued development of our actuarial, data, IT and investment functions as we move beyond the initial scale up phase of the business.” He adds: “This new talent will serve to enhance our competitiveness as well as cement our reputation as a well-resourced global legacy player with an enviable blend of industry experience and data led innovation.” In July 2020, DARAG Group appointed Elliott Goss as group head of claims, based in London.
