Pinion names Ledger Investing's Gary Maier as US chief executive

Gary S. Maier, who spent his Ledger Investing years putting casualty risk in front of institutional investors, was named chief executive of Pinion Insurance's US operation on Tuesday. He had been chief revenue officer at the New York casualty insurance-linked securities firm and ran Ledger Risk Markets, its reinsurance intermediary arm.

Before Ledger, Maier spent more than 17 years at Chubb, rising from trainee to zone executive underwriting officer, then served as chief underwriting officer at Tower Group from 2005 to 2013, with US marketing, distribution and corporate development under his remit. He later ran the Capacity Group of New Jersey, a Mahwah brokerage whose retail operations EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants acquired in 2017.

Ledger was the more unusual stop, and the one that bears most directly on Pinion's structure. There Maier helped build a market for casualty risk that many people thought could not be securitized, finding MGAs and carriers willing to cede the exposures and matching them with institutional investors. Pinion says that marketplace placed more than $2.5 billion in premium in its first several years, up from the roughly $2 billion Ledger was approaching when it named a dedicated reinsurance chief in 2024. In a statement, Maier described the work as making the relationship between MGAs and their capacity providers "more transparent, efficient, and responsive."

Pinion launched in February with a preferred equity commitment of up to $180 million from Barings and is incorporated in Bermuda and run from London. It has staffed its front office from other carriers, including Fortegra's Kyle Selvig as US chief underwriting officer and Aspen's former UK finance chief Chris Jones as group CFO. In July it launched Sarrus, a data platform that pulls information directly from MGAs' source systems, giving Pinion and its reinsurers a daily view of each portfolio and building the month-end bordereau so MGAs do not have to.

Underwriting has not started, and the start date has moved back while Pinion pursues nationwide excess and surplus licenses by buying an existing shell insurer, a route that requires approval from that company's home-state regulator. Co-founder Laura Baird, the group's chief technology officer, said Maier's background matches the company's focus on underwriting and on working closely with MGAs.

The founders came out of the carriers that have done this before. Group CEO Neil McConachie helped found Fidelis, Lancashire and Montpelier Re, and was chief risk and capital officer at the fronting carrier Accredited before Pinion; co-founder Philip Vandoninck previously ran Fidelis' Bermuda operation, and Baird's Pinion Risk Consulting built the technology the carrier runs on. The choice of a securitization-side executive to run the US points to capacity constraints as well as MGA pipeline, since the reinsurers behind its cessions are the audience for the daily portfolio view Sarrus produces. The home-state regulator's approval is the date that now controls the launch.