Aon Names Strategic Solutions and Innovation Practice Leaders

Aon has promoted Ward Ching, head of strategic solutions and innovation, and Michael Gruetzmacher, head of alternative risk transfer and innovation, to lead its Strategic Solutions and Innovation (SSI) practice within Aon Commercial Risk Solutions in North America.

Bleu Bettencourt will join the team as managing director, alternative risk transfer and innovation.

In a statement, Aon said, "The SSI team will work with clients, colleagues, and markets to design and implement innovative solutions that enhance decision making, help navigate new forms of volatility, reduce the relevance gap created by unmet needs, and effectively match capital to risk."

"Aon has always offered strategic risk solutions, but the emergence and acceleration of disruptive risks propelled us to bring together this team in a way that makes our specialists even more accessible to address unmet client needs and to deliver the breadth of our differentiated capabilities," Joe Peiser, Aon's commercial risk solutions leader for North America, said in the statement.

"There couldn't be two people more fit to lead this team than Ward and Michael. Ward brings more than 40 years of risk finance and enterprise risk management experience to the table, and Michael has led the development of nontraditional insurance solutions and alternative risk transfer frameworks for clients. The two complement each other well and will help us to further innovate new solutions," Maureen Toomey, Aon's head of commercial risk solutions strategy and execution for North America, said in the statement.

Aon said the SSI team will aim to deliver new value-generating ideas and alternatives to traditional risk transfer approaches. The goal is to bring clients quantified risk insights and scaled solutions for risk retention and risk transfer across the full portfolio of risk that will enable clients to make better decisions.