Zurich has introduced a new "resilience solutions" business unit in Australia and New Zealand headed by Mervyn Rea, as part of a global advisory initiative.

The new risk services team will be led by Melbourne-based Mr Rea locally, while Hanno Mijer, former Cover-More CEO, takes the global role, based in Switzerland.

“This new unit is an exciting development which allows us to expand our offering beyond Zurich’s insurance customers,” Mr Rea said.

Mr Rea has more than 30 years’ experience with Zurich, working in the UK until 2003 when he transferred to Perth, and then on to Melbourne in 2012 where has been head of risk engineering since October 2015.

“We are already an established, leading provider of risk prevention strategies for our underwriters, brokers and customers and Zurich’s risk engineering team has a strong track record in our local market,” he said.

Zurich, which has already launched Climate Change Resilience Services, Zurich Cyber Security Services and Supply Chain Risk Management Services, says it will further invest in proprietary services and external collaborations to provide differentiated risk solutions.

The launch of Zurich Resilience Solutions follows the promotion of Group Underwriting head Sierra Signorelli to CEO of Commercial Insurance earlier this month, succeeding James Shea, who Zurich says decided to pursue opportunities outside the company.

Reporting to Ms Signorelli in his new role, Mr Mijer says the new advisory unit taps into the expertise of Zurich’s large workforce - in particular more than 750 risk engineers. The offer combines risk advisory insights with technology and new tools, leveraging data and analytics as well as third-party partnerships.

“With Zurich Resilience Solutions, we want to leverage that wealth of experience, along with insights from rich pools of data and digital capabilities, for the benefit of our customers,” he said.

Mr Mijer relocated to Sydney in September 2018 to take the top Cover-More role after Zurich acquired the travel insurance business the previous year. He left Australia to become Head of Commercial Insurance Services in July, which was a newly established role reporting to Mr Shea.

Cover-More retrenched 10% of its 2300-strong workforce last year amid financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which virtually grounded global travel demand.