Novatae adds Whaling and former JaVA team

Novatae Risk Group has hired Keli Whaling and several members of her former JaVA Underwriting team, with the Beazley-led panel of Lloyd’s capacity providers that previously supported their operation also moving over with the business, Program Manager can reveal.

Sources said Whaling joined Novatae last month as program director. Whaling’s former JaVA colleague Deana Rose is among those who also made the move to Novatae, and has been appointed senior underwriter.

At JaVA, Whaling and her team underwrote a book of allied healthcare and miscellaneous professional liability, and they will continue to focus on those segments having moved to Novatae, sources said.

Market sources said the panel of Lloyd’s-based capacity providers that had supported their underwriting at JaVA had followed them to their new employer.

“Novatae provides a platform for underwriting teams to use their skill sets to build new programs or expand existing facilities to include a broader geography or more classes of business,” Richard Kerr, CEO of Novatae, said in a statement to this publication.

“We are pleased to have Keli and her team join Novatae. They have a reputation for producing profitable underwriting results. Our primary goal is to generate good business for our insurer partners. Keli and team can and will deliver,” Kerr added.

The hires of Whaling and her former JaVA colleagues comes almost a year after World Insurance Associates-owned Novatae acquired Dallas, Texas-based MGA and wholesaler MarketScout. Completion of that deal on 1 November 2022 saw MarketScout’s founder and CEO Kerr named CEO of Novatae.