2022 Women to Watch Awards Americas EMEA
Sarah Stanford Active underwriter of syndicate 4711
Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd.
London
Sarah Stanford had thoughts of going on to university and studying to become a criminal defense lawyer when she was 16. Put off by the lack of discipline and structure at college, however, she left full-time education and looked for a job.
Starting out as a claims technician at a small Lloyd’s of London broker in 1998, 24 years later she is one of a handful of female active underwriters at Lloyd’s.
Specializing early, Ms. Stanford moved on from the broker after two years and became a financial lines underwriting assistant at a managing agency. She worked her way up to underwriter and left to join a newly formed financial lines team at Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd. in 2007, just before the global financial crisis.
After helping remediate the account, she was named head of financial lines in 2011 before she reached 30.
“When the new leadership asked, ‘Who wants to be involved in this and who wants to be involved in that?’ I saw that nobody else was really stepping up, so I thought, ‘Well, now’s my opportunity,” she said.
Over the next eight years, she took on responsibility for other product lines, and in 2019 she was named active underwriter of Aspen’s Lloyd’s syndicate, tasked with turning around the poorly performing unit.
Introducing more effective and consistent oversight to the business, she led the syndicate back to profitability and its more than doubling in size.
The variety of the insurance business keeps her enthusiastic. “I like the diversity. In the 24 years I’ve been doing it, no one day is the same,” she said. “I’m always learning.”
Ms. Stanford is a well-rounded executive who remains aware of the needs of those she works with, said Theresa Froehlich, non-executive chair of Aspen Managing Agency Ltd. “She’s a thoughtful underwriter and takes on responsibility for her role, but she also understands that she’s a team player,” she said.
Ms. Stanford is also involved in Aspen’s diversity efforts. As group executive sponsor of Aspen’s build inclusion workstream, she helped the group launch employee resource groups focused on gender and on race and ethnicity.
