Interim COO (Chief Operating Officer) For Independent Lloyd’s Broker

Our client is a mid-sized independent insurance broker with a global reach, serving clients in over 70 countries via a dozen offices around the world, including London and New York. The leadership team undertook a strategic review of the business, focusing on growth and bottom-line improvements to better position the group for organic growth, capital investment or sale. A core step towards success was improving operations and efficiencies, which required an interim COO to develop their vision, strategy and delivering transformational activity.

Identifying a COO on an interim basis presented several challenges:

• Niche candidate pool: The requirement for interim expertise significantly narrowed the field, particularly within the insurance industry.
• Strategic and transformational capability: The ideal candidate needed to not only refine processes but also drive meaningful change at pace.
• Immediate availability: The client required a leader who could start with little to no notice, further limiting the talent pool.

• Leveraged our extensive network across insurance and the wider operations profession to swiftly identify high-calibre interim consultants. 24 candidates were identified within 24 hours.
• Conducted targeted outreach to assess availability, relevant transformation experience, cultural alignment and strategic fit.
• Developed a longlist of 10 candidates, each engaged discreetly to ensure discretion and clarity of role expectations.
• Maintained a highly adaptable and streamlined process, given the urgency of the appointment.

• Damhurst targeted candidates including COOs, operations directors and transformation directors across broking houses, Lloyd’s carriers, company markets and MGAs.
• 50% of the longlist came from outside of insurance, offering a diversity of experience.
• We held in-depth meetings with the 10 longlisted candidates, 5 of whom continued through the process.

Damhurst successfully identified and secured a high-impact transformation leader with a proven record of delivering strategic and operational change across multiple industries, including insurance. The candidate was onboarded rapidly and played an instrumental role in aligning operations with the client’s broader strategic goals.