Willis Re taps Conduit cofounder Eckert as CEO

Neil Eckert, who cofounded Bermudian reinsurer Conduit Holdings in 2020 and became chief executive of Conduit Re in 2025, will run Willis Re's global reinsurance broking and advisory business once he completes his current contract—a move that gives the handoff an unusually clean shape. The Royal Gazette reported the appointment a day after Conduit said Christian Dunleavy, a former group president of Aspen Insurance Holdings, will succeed Eckert on March 1; Eckert will spend the intervening six months working with Dunleavy and Conduit's team, and Dunleavy will join the Conduit board as an executive director when he takes over.

Willis Re is getting a rare mix of placement and capital-market experience, the product of roughly 40 years in re/insurance that began at Benfield Group, where Eckert worked as a reinsurance broker from 1986 and reached the board two years later. He founded Benfield & Rea Investment Trust, a vehicle that raised capital for Lloyd's and company underwriting capacity and was relisted as Brit Insurance Holdings, and he went on to cofound Climate Exchange, the carbon-emissions trading platform, and now chairs IncubEx, an environmental derivatives platform.

Conduit, which pulled in $1 billion in its 2020 London Stock Exchange initial public offering—described by the Gazette as then the largest IPO by a start-up—is where the CEO tenure came from. Eckert, who had been executive chairman before becoming chief executive in 2025, has called Conduit's first five years an absolute privilege that turned a start-up into a respected reinsurer. Lucy Clarke, a Willis Re board member, told the paper Eckert is one of the most experienced, entrepreneurial, driven and technologically astute people in the industry.

Conduit reached outside for Dunleavy a day before Eckert's destination became public, a hire this publication read as a mandate to rethink the book as the Bermudian reinsurer faces repricing. Eckert's exit to a broker clarifies that mandate rather than complicating it. Dunleavy will inherit a balance sheet whose founder has moved to the other side of the trade; at Willis Re, Eckert's capital-side history is the pitch, and a broker who has run an underwriter's book can sell more than placement.