Lockton has made six distinct senior appointments across Asia since June - cyber advisory, wholesale placement, two chief growth officers, an emerging risks team and a regional marine and transportation growth leader - a concentration of hiring that signals a deliberate regional platform build rather than opportunistic recruitment. The latest two appointments are Jeremie Deschamps (pictured left) as regional head of cyber advisory for Asia and Martin Allain (pictured right) as head of wholesale, both based in Singapore and both effective immediately.

Together with Sandra Lee and Yuman Chan as chief growth officers for risk and people solutions respectively, the emerging risks unit Lee established on joining, and Alberto Ferriolo as regional growth leader for marine and transportation from July 1, the appointments give Lockton a regional structure spanning advisory, placement, emerging risks and specialty industry lines that did not exist six months ago. The pace and breadth of the build is the analytical story; Deschamps and Allain are its latest components.

The cyber advisory appointment

Deschamps joins from Marsh Asia, where he served as vice president of cyber risk consulting, bringing nearly 20 years of experience spanning cybersecurity engineering, industrial cyber resilience, operational technology security, business risk management, cyber risk modelling and cyber insurance advisory. That breadth - from technical cybersecurity engineering through to insurance purchasing and resilience planning - is the specific credential that makes the role analytically distinct from a conventional cyber broking appointment. He will oversee cyber exposure assessment, risk quantification and advice on risk management and insurance strategies, reporting to Frederic Boles, regional head of ProExec and Credit for Asia.

Boles said cyber risk had become a strategic business issue and a board-level priority across every industry, with organisations increasingly wanting to quantify their cyber exposures to make informed decisions on protection, reputation, data and operations. The market context is specific: Munich Re estimated the global cyber insurance market generated nearly $15 billion in premiums in 2025 and could reach approximately $28 billion by 2030, although premium growth has slowed over the past three years - making advisory depth a more important competitive differentiator than capacity access alone.

The wholesale placement appointment

Allain has returned to the industry following a brief retirement - a detail that is itself analytically significant. A specialist choosing to come out of retirement for a Singapore-based wholesale and alternative risk transfer role signals a compelling market opportunity rather than routine recruitment. His previous positions include head of Marsh's international wholesale operation in London, property underwriting manager at Reinsurance Australia Corporation, managing director for facultative business in Asia-Pacific at THB Singapore from 2003 overseeing reinsurance, wholesale and direct client placements, and a role on Howden's wholesale broking team in Singapore from 2015.

He will work with Lockton offices across Asia on wholesale and specialty placements covering property, power, mining, manufacturing, multinational programmes, alternative risk transfer, captives, construction, project cargo, financial lines and marine insurance - lines that require specialist capacity and international market access beyond what local insurance markets provide.

His appointment arrives as Singapore considers expanding its alternative risk transfer infrastructure. The Monetary Authority of Singapore opened consultation on July 7 on a proposed protected cell company framework intended initially to support captive insurance, insurance-linked securities and sovereign risk pools. Lockton did not connect Allain's appointment to the proposal, but the consultation provides timely market context for his specific experience in captives and alternative risk transfer.

The regional build in full

The six appointments since June collectively indicate that Lockton is assembling a regional specialty platform in Asia with sufficient depth across advisory, placement and industry lines to compete for complex risks that require local expertise rather than referral to global centres. The question the build raises - whether the platform will generate the premium volume and client relationships to justify the investment - will be answered by the business each hire develops over the next 12 to 18 months.