Birmingham’s financial sector is promising a happy new year to a handful of new recruits across several city firms.
Insurer NIG has strengthened its Birmingham office with four new appointments as part of the restructure of its business announced earlier this year.
Andy Jones has been appointed area business manager for the Midland region and Mandie Jarrett, John Flaherty and Wayne Gadd have been appointed senior business development managers – new positions designed to support key broker relationships across the region.
Mr Jones will run NIG’s trading and development activity across the Midlands and will be responsible for delivering strong trading relationships across the insurer’s broker partners to target SME and corporate business.
He has worked in the insurance industry for 23 years in various underwriting and broker development roles.
He joins NIG from Primary General Insurance where he was managing director for the Midlands and the South West region.
Mr Jones said: “We’ve got a very strong team in the Midlands now and will be increasing the time we spend face to face with brokers across the area with these appointments.
“The early signs are very encouraging indeed and working closely with our underwriting team we have already seen evidence of our increased appetite when we secured a large property owners portfolio worth almost £1 million from AXA Insurance.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Midlands has also strengthened its team with the appointment of a new disputes specialist in its forensic services team.
Gareth Xifaras is moving across from the firm’s corporate finance department to strengthen its commercial disputes offering. Having joined the firm three years ago Mr Xifaras has significant experience of deals and commercial dispute resolution within the public-private arena, in particular infrastructure projects and PFI/PPP projects. He has been in the professional services industry for over nine years.
He said it was a particularly interesting time to be joining the firm’s forensic services team.
“The wider economic backdrop has lead to an increase in both economic crime and commercial disputes and I am looking forward to working with Midlands organisations to help them tackle these challenging issues.”
Mr Xifaras will be based at the firm’s Cornwall Court offices in Birmingham and work with the team led by Ranjit Auluk.
The appointment follows the recent launch of the forensic services team’s innovative fraud academy, a new forum, which allows Midlands-based businesses to share information on how best to prevent, detect and investigate fraud, bribery and other economic crime.
Meanwhile Lloyds Banking Group has finalised the structure of its team supporting business customers, which has grown from 27 people to 35 over the last year, including the appointment of three new relationship managers for the area.
