Pen Underwriting names Catriona Thomson CFO
With effect from July 1, 2023, and pending regulatory approval, Pen Underwriting announced that Catriona Thomson has been appointed Chief Financial Officer and will join the Pen Executive team.
This comes after the statement made in March that Sarah Breslin, the current CFO, would take over as managing director of Pen’s Specialty division at that time.
Catriona Thomson, a chartered accountant by profession, brings a depth of corporate expertise, business savvy, and considerable experience working in regulated financial services. She also has a proven track record of leadership, having served as Head of IBA Operations in the UK for the larger Gallagher group since 2014 and presently managing a 230-person team in Glasgow.
Catriona Thomson worked as a senior manager for nine years at Morgan Stanley, mostly in the derivatives and global structured products space. Prior to that, she worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the public sector advisory business.
Tom Downey, the CEO of Pen Underwriting, expressed his happiness at Catriona’s hiring by saying, “We couldn’t be pleased to welcome Catriona Thomson as our new CFO. She not only possesses the passion, dynamism, technical know-how, and leadership ability to assist our expansion goals, but her personality and fit with Pen Underwriting also come through. Catriona has a built-in understanding of our business, products, and clients and is in a perfect position to assist in shaping Pen’s story of strategic sustainable growth. Over the past nine years, she has worked across all four of Gallagher’s UK trading divisions and has played a key role in integrating many acquired businesses.
It’s wonderful that we can once more draw on our own talent pool to fill a critical position at Pen as we work to become a $1 billion GWP underwriting and distribution organization.
“I’m ecstatic to be joining Pen at such an exciting time, with the business in full growth mode as it invests in new underwriting specialties and a wider portfolio of client solutions,” Catriona Thomson continued. I am very looking forward to joining the team and getting to know all of my new coworkers in the upcoming months because I have gotten to know the company well and have always experienced Pen as being collaborative and customer-centric.
