New AGCS market manager to help China unit double export portfolio

Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) Hong Kong will have a new head of market management as of next Monday, in a move that reinforces Allianz’s push into the China market.

Jack Jenner joins AGCS Hong Kong as head of market management, and will be responsible for driving growth initiatives across the Greater China region and developing relationships with key clients and brokers in Hong Kong.

Jenner was previously an account manager with Allianz’s market-management team in London, and has worked in various commercial roles at other insurers.

AGCS head of communications for Asia, Wendy Koh, said that Jenner’s appointment was part of an overall strategy to support the firm’s new China unit. “Jack’s responsibilities will be to expand broker and agent distribution in Hong Kong and China,” she said. “We need to raise the profile of Allianz in these markets.”

Koh said that the group had an overall target of doubling its export portfolio in emerging markets to 30% by 2015. “We call it the Rising Dragon strategy, and it includes India, China, Russia, Brazil and Africa,” she said. “We’re well on track to meeting the target in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Jenner will be part of a team led by the CEO of AGCS Hong Kong and Greater China, Mark Mitchell, who himself only recently joined AGCS from RSA Specialty.

On the same day that Jenner starts in his new position, the current CEO of Allianz Turkey, Alexander Ankel, will join the AGCS Singapore office as Regional CEO of Asia. In addition to his regional responsibilities for AGCS’s offices in Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong, Mr Ankel will also be CEO of AGCS’s Singapore branch office.

Mr Ankel has been in several senior management positions since joining the Allianz Group in 1997. This new move marks his return to Asia where, prior to his new appointment, he was CEO of Allianz Fire & Marine Insurance in Japan from 2000-2004 and then CEO of Allianz Malaysia from 2004-2010.