The latest staff member at
Lockton Companies’ Atlanta office is a 39-year insurance veteran, a UK transplant and a dedicated advocate for client service – and he’s eager to bring all of that to the table as he prepares to lead the office’s commercial growth efforts.
Andrew Carr, a native of Yorkshire, UK, joined the team at Lockton in late July as Commercial Insurance Team Leader in Atlanta. He comes to the role with a history of working with major commercial accounts and will focus on growing Lockton’s book of business even as he tends to existing large accounts.
Though he loves the insurance business, in his youth, Carr considered accountancy and law before settling on brokering. It was the chance to work on risk management problems in a consumer-facing role that led to his eventual decision.
“I felt it was potentially a very exciting avenue for me,” Carr told
Insurance Business America. “It suited my personality and I liked the opportunity of working with both clients and insurance markets.”
He began his career at
Sedgwick as an account administrator at the property group in Leeds. He spent five years in the position before moving to London to work in the company’s head office where he became more deeply involved with risk management for large commercial clients.
“Moving gave me the opportunity to work with clients in the US,” Carr said. “In 1996, I had the opportunity spend three years with Sedgwick in New York for work experience, and I got to understand the market and work with large risk management clients.”
About halfway through that three-year period, Sedgwick was acquired by
Marsh. Carr – who had moved with his wife and two young children, who quickly became what he terms “Americanized” – elected to stay on at
Marsh New York.
It was the continuation of a very valuable period for him.
“I had been involved with some of the largest companies in the world, and the opportunity to learn about those businesses, to travel with them around the world, to help with risk management challenges – it was a very exciting and rewarding experience,” he said.
Yet the allure of new opportunities soon called. In 2002, Carr became aware of an executive position in Marsh’s Atlanta office working with “two very large global clients,” and made the transfer. Three years later, he moved to Integro Insurance Brokers to pursue what he called “the very rare opportunity to be part of building a firm from scratch.”
“The experience of working in a startup and to build a new office were both incredibly challenging and incredibly rewarding,” he said. “It honed my client service skills by shifting my focus to doing whatever needs to be done to satisfy the client.”
That broker-client relationship is what eventually led Carr to Lockton, a company with an industry-wide reputation for service. As the firm looks to bolster its presence in the Southeast through winning new, large risk management accounts, Carr will be able to exercise that passion – even as the risk landscape for commercial enterprises continues to change.
“We are in a rapidly evolving world. Clients’ exposures are changing every day whether it’s cyber-related, climate change-related or any other number of factors,” he said. “The world is becoming a smaller place in terms of supply change exposures, so for those of us involved in global accounts, the opportunity is to stay abreast of those challenges and continue to innovate for the benefit of our clients.”
