Arch’s Mecham tops Gracechurch’s 2023 London underwriter ranking

Arch’s James Mecham has topped this year’s overall ranking of leading London underwriters in a nomination-based survey conducted by Insurindex, a joint venture between insurance research consultancy Gracechurch and Brandex.

Mecham has served as head of casualty at Arch Insurance International since December 2019.

With close to 20 years’ experience in the class, he previously held casualty underwriter positions at Chaucer Syndicate, Argo and AIG.

Mecham is no stranger to the London’s Leading Underwriters Report, having ranked number three in the market’s casualty underwriters last year, and taking the class’ top spot in 2021.

Representing cyber in the top 10 ranking is Tokio Marine Kiln’s Paul Gooch, who was appointed divisional head of large account cyber in May under the carrier’s new standalone cyber and enterprise risk division.

Longtime top-ranking underwriter Richard Trubshaw took third place, having had his six-year winning run broken last year by Faraday’s Nick West (who placed seventh overall this year).

Part of David Shipley’s founding team for MAP in 2000, Trubshaw announced his plans to sign off as active underwriter at Syndicate 2791 this year.

Retaining fourth position is Chubb Global Markets’ head of marine David Kirk. He assumed the role in July last year, having previously served as deputy head of marine and product head for marine cargo at Chubb’s Syndicate 2488.

Also from the marine class is Ascot marine hull underwriter Andrew Moulton and Apollo Syndicate 1969’s head of hull Iain Henstridge in eighth and ninth place respectively.

Ollie Richards, Talbot Underwriting’s head of international property, closed out the top five. He previously served as class underwriter for international property D&F at AIG’s underwriting unit.

The top 10 London leading underwriters is completed with fine art and specie underwriters Steve Douglas and James Croome in sixth and tenth place respectively.

Douglas has served as senior fine art and specie underwriter at Ark Syndicate Management for more than a decade, while Croome has held the positions of underwriter at Arch Insurance Group and active underwriter Syndicate 2012 since 2014.

London’s Leading Underwriters 2023: How the results are calculated

The ranking is based on nominations gathered by Insurindex’s surveys of brokers and underwriters across more than 130 firms in the London market.

This year’s ranking is based on data collected between February 2022 and May 2023, which saw more than 950 individual underwriter nominations.

Underwriters are ranked according to the number of mentions within a particular line of business, based on the extent to which they are regarded as market leaders for their class.

Look out for more coverage from The Insurer over the week as we deep dive into the rankings according to line of business…

To download the full report click here.