Headquarters:
Charlotte, NC
Year founded:
2000
Number of employees:
7,400
Phone:
704 749 2700
Email:
patrick.smith@amwins.com
Website:
amwins.com
LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/company/amwins-group
“We maintain several cross-company employee networks allowing staff to connect and learn from each other, fostering our inclusive culture and celebrating the diversity within our business”
Marcella McLean,
Arch Insurance International
AMWINS
Scott Purviance
Chief Executive Officer
James Drinkwater
President
Ben Sloop
Chief Operating Officer
Leadership
Scott M. Purviance became the chief executive officer of Amwins on May 1, 2018. One of the company’s first employees, Purviance joined Amwins in July 2001 as chief financial officer and took on the additional role of chief operating officer in April 2012. He has served on Amwins’ board of directors since April 2015.
Purviance began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1992, serving for seven years in the insurance services assurance practice. After leaving PwC in 1999, he joined the business insurance division of Royal & Sun Alliance USA as vice president of finance. He earned a BS in Accounting from Wake Forest University.
Chief Executive Officer
Scott Purviance
James C. Drinkwater is president of Amwins and executive chair of Amwins Global Risks. He previously served as president of the company’s brokerage division from 2008 to 2021, and prior to that was chief operating officer of Amwins Brokerage. Drinkwater capitalizes on his more than 30 years of experience in E&S casualty, as well as wholesale and specialty brokering, to establish goals and priorities for Amwins’ property and casualty producers across the country.
Prior to joining Amwins in 2005, he held executive positions with both Stewart Smith Group and Willis Group. He began his career in the London marketplace.
President
James Drinkwater
Benjamin R. Sloop currently serves as the chief operating officer of Amwins. Prior to taking on the role of COO, he had served as president of the company’s small business division, Amwins Access, since its inception in January 2015. After receiving his undergraduate degree from Harvard, he began his career in management consulting at Bain & Company, and then joined Parthenon Capital, a private equity fund, where he worked on the Amwins capital raise in 2005. The following year, he joined Amwins in an M&A role. He left Amwins in late 2007 to attend Stanford Business School. Ben worked for Bills.com, a Silicon Valley start-up, until October 2011, when he joined Amwins once again.
Chief Operating Officer
Ben Sloop
“We maintain several cross-company employee networks allowing staff to connect and learn from each other, fostering our inclusive culture and celebrating the diversity within our business”
Marcella McLean,
Arch Insurance International
“We will continue to strengthen our service proposition and customer experience as a key differentiator, as we build on the momentum we have achieved to date across multiple business lines and territories”
Marcella McLean, Arch Insurance International
Read on
Award Winner
Leadership
SPECIAL REPORT
Home
Bio
“We will continue to strengthen our service proposition and customer experience as a key differentiator, as we build on the momentum we have achieved to date across multiple business lines and territories”
Marcella McLean,
Arch Insurance International
“We maintain several cross-company employee networks allowing staff to connect and learn from each other, fostering our inclusive culture and celebrating the diversity within our business”
Marcella McLean,
Arch Insurance International
Read on
Award Winner
Leadership
SPECIAL REPORT
Home
Bio
Darin Stafford
Chief Financial Officer
Darin K. Stafford has served as chief financial officer of Amwins since October 2016. He joined the firm from Remington Outdoor Company, where he served as vice president, corporate controller, and led a 40-member finance team with broad responsibility over corporate, operational and strategic finance, investor relations, shared services, treasury, risk management, and real estate. Before joining Remington, Stafford worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers for 15 years, including a three-year rotation in London, England.
Stafford is a 1994 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a bachelor’s degree in both accounting and finance.
Chief Financial Officer
Darin Stafford
Kristin Downey
Chief Administrative Officer
Kristin Downey leads the team responsible for developing and implementing the people strategies to support Amwins’ business objectives. She also directs the management and operations for compensation and benefits, HR systems and payroll, employee relations and assistance, talent management, training and development, and marketing and communications. Downey also leads the company’s philanthropic efforts, including the Amwins Foundation.
Chief Administrative Officer
Kristin Downey
Amwins remains the largest independent wholesale insurance firm, with more than $33 billion in annual premium placements in 2023. The firm maintains nearly 38,000 underwriting relationships, almost 31,000 retail agency relationships and has nearly 7,400 employees worldwide.
Amwins’ team of specialists touts a deep bench of niche industry experts, each committed to strategizing and investing in clients’ success. Comprised of five core divisions, 90+ underwriting programs and a worldwide reach, our dedicated practice groups, brokers and underwriters have the expertise, knowledge and relationships of the firm at their fingertips.
“We will continue to strengthen our service proposition and customer experience as a key differentiator, as we build on the momentum we have achieved to date across multiple business lines and territories”
Marcella McLean,
Arch Insurance International
Donna Hargrove
General Counsel
Mark Bernacki
Chief Underwriting Officer
Julie Prewitt
Senior Vice President, Marketing
Simon Williams
Chief Strategy & Distribution Officer, Arch Insurance International
and Active Underwriter, Syndicate 1955
Since 2008, Donna Hargrove has served as general counsel of Amwins and is responsible for identifying and managing all legal risks for the company. She advises executive leadership and the board of directors on a range of business issues, including corporate governance, risk management, and regulatory compliance. Prior to joining Amwins, Hargrove served as corporate in-house counsel for BB&T Insurance Services. Earlier in her career, she served in private practice with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, concentrating on mergers and acquisitions and general corporate matters.
General Counsel
Donna Hargrove
Mark Bernacki is the chief underwriting officer of Amwins, the first to serve in the role. Prior to that, he served as president of Amwins Special Risk Underwriters. In addition to his leadership in underwriting, Bernacki runs the Amwins Alternative Risk Transfer Team for Amwins.
Chief Underwriting Officer
Mark Bernacki
Julie Prewitt has worked on nearly every aspect of marketing and advertising in her nearly 20 years in the industry. Her team at REInsurePro manages branding, advertising, events, content, digital campaigns, and agent engagement and plays a key role in product development.
Senior Vice President, Marketing
Julie Prewitt
Kimi leads the Estate Planning and Wealth Protection team and is a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. She understands the complex and delicate nature of family estate planning, the technical requirements around probate and estate administration, and the importance of preserving wealth for future generations. Her advice is accurate, commercial, strategic and tailored to each situation.
Partner
Kimi Shah
Kimi leads the Estate Planning and Wealth Protection team and is a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. She understands the complex and delicate nature of family estate planning, the technical requirements around probate and estate administration, and the importance of preserving wealth for future generations. Her advice is accurate, commercial, strategic and tailored to each situation.
Partner
Kimi Shah
Kimi leads the Estate Planning and Wealth Protection team and is a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. She understands the complex and delicate nature of family estate planning, the technical requirements around probate and estate administration, and the importance of preserving wealth for future generations. Her advice is accurate, commercial, strategic and tailored to each situation.
Partner
Kimi Shah
Arch provides underwriting solutions across a diverse and growing portfolio of more than 20 business classes, spanning multiple platforms in the London company market, the Lloyd’s market, the UK regional market as well as markets in Australia, Bermuda, and the EU.
Through their Lloyd’s and London company market platforms, Arch provides customised solutions and high levels of capacity across multiple (re)insurance classes. Arch’s UK Regional division, launched in 2018, offers specialised insurance solutions for a wide range of businesses, from 11 locations across the country.
The past few years have been transformational for Arch Insurance International. Since 2019 the company has more than trebled in size in terms of GWP, and this growth has been seen across all territorial platforms. In 2021 Arch launched its new brand promise, Pursuing Better Together, encapsulating an approach to doing business based on collaboration, responsiveness, and a genuine commitment to continually raising the bar.
Arch has a clearly defined three-year plan that is underpinned by more than 100 objectives.
SPECIAL REPORT
Home
Bio
Read on
IB Top Brokerages
Award Winner
Award Winner
“We will continue to strengthen our service proposition and customer experience as a key differentiator, as we build on the momentum we have achieved to date across multiple business lines and territories,” says McLean. “Our im is to continue to grow our market relevance and strengthen our partnerships with our strategic brokers as we expand our leadership position in key sectors.
“We will also continue to invest in talent. We are committed to drawing from the broadest pools of talent, and to creating an environment that attracts and retains stellar employees. We recognise the importance of building teams that are diverse, collaborative, and innovative and are dedicated to cultivating a supportive and inclusive workplace culture in which all our employees can thrive.”
