W.R. Berkley Corp. promotes Philip Welt to General Counsel, Executive VP

Fortune 500 insurance holding company W.R. Berkley Corp. announced Wednesday, Jan. 2, that it has appointed Philip Welt as its newest general counsel.  

Welt joined the Greenwich, Conn.-based insurer in 2004 as vice president-senior counsel. In 2011, he was promoted to executive vice president, a position from which he oversaw some of Berkley’s individual companies. 

Berkley, a global insurer and one of the largest commercial line writers in the U.S., is made up of nearly 60 insurance companies and seven reinsurance companies or “operating units.” The company says its decentralized branches operate as if they were small businesses, which allows the individual offices to “identify and respond quickly and effectively to changing market conditions and customer needs.”

Welt, who will continue to serve as executive VP alongside his new GC role, previously was assistant general counsel-mergers and acquisitions at the New York-based insurance corporation American International Group Inc., or AIG, according to a spokeswoman for Berkley. She declined a request to speak with Welt on Thursday.

Earlier in his career, Welt, a certified public accountant, served as a senior manager at Deloitte & Touche. He also had a stint as a corporate associate at the New York headquarters of the global law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. Welt is a graduate of the NYU School of Law. He also earned an MBA from Columbia University and a degree in business administration from Hofstra University in New York, according to the company. 

At the same time that Welt was named GC, Berkley also appointed Joseph Sullivan and Michael Maloney as executive vice presidents.

Sullivan had served as president of one of Berkley’s operating units, Berkley Re America, while Maloney was an outside hire from global insurer Chubb North America, where he was the chief underwriting officer.

Related: 2017: A bad year for commercial lines, says Fitch Ratings report