Berkshire Hathaway sets up specialist insurer in Dublin

Berkshire Hathaway has established a speciality insurance business in Ireland aimed at winning a share of the commercial insurance market here . The company will target larger business clients in sectors such as commercial property, general commercial liability, healthcare liability and finance.

The Berkshire Hathaway Speciality Insurance Company (BHSI) announced on Tuesday that it had appointed Cormac McNamara, who has worked for 24 years in the insurance sector in the UK and Ireland, to head the Irish operation. The company did not indicate likely employment levels in Dublin, though it is expected to initially build up a team of more than 10 people here.

BHSI is part of the global empire of Berkshire Hathaway, the giant US company led by Warren Buffett, which has stakes in major businesses worldwide. The move to Ireland is an expansion of its existing European speciality insurance business, run from London, which provides commercial property, casualty, executive and professional lines, including cyber and healthcare liability insurance.

BHSI now intended to bring all of BHSI's underwriting capabilities to Ireland, according to Tom Bolt, president for the UK and Southern Europe. Mr McNamara spent the last six years working at MS Amlin/Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group, where he held a variety of underwriting positions, most recently Irish underwriting and distribution manager. He previously worked with Chubb Insurance and QBE Europe.

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BHSI was established in 2013, when Mr Buffett decided to increase the group’s focus on the speciality commercial insurance market and has grown quickly in the meantime across the US, the Far East, Australia and Europe. It is part of the group’s wider insurance operation, the Berkshire Hathaway National Indemnity Group.