Leadership team

David Bearman is the founder and CEO of Aventum Group, chairman of Rokstone Group, and CEO of Consilium.

David developed what is today Aventum Group as an 18-year-old in 1996. Since then he has forged a unique path forward, taking the business from a small commercial retail broker, to a global (re)insurance broking and underwriting business, on course to control $1bn GWP by 2023.

On this 25-year journey to date, David has been at the heart of both the London market broking and MGA scenes, founding successful brands in sectors of these markets where he sees opportunity.

Alongside his experience placing and underwriting reinsurance and insurance products, schemes and delegated authority arrangements, he has also established and developed many of these products. These include Property, Casualty, Motor Fleet, Plant & Equipment, Marine Cargo, Legal Expenses, Professional Indemnity, Latent Defects and Extended Warranty, which he has marketed across multiple trades and industries.

He has achieved and developed relationships with numerous global capacity providers, forming an extensive client network with a results-focused approach as a core business strategy.

Most of all though David is an entrepreneurial leader. He has built the Group from the ground up all without external investment, and is constantly seeking out new directions to expand the Group. He looks to bring in talent that shares his attitude to working, and finding new ways to break from traditional ways of providing insurance.

James Potter is the chief executive officer and co-owner of Rokstone and a board director of Aventum Group.

James has over 23 years' experience within the London and global insurance markets, successfully developing and maintaining a valued network centralised on long term strategic partnerships.

He has had responsibility for establishing various trading divisions, teams and MGAs within the broking and underwriting environment, from start-ups and the restructuring of existing teams, to servicing global placements for multinational firms with global capacity providers and client networks.

James has facilitated the placing and underwriting of reinsurance and/or insurance products, schemes, and delegated authority arrangements, including online trading platforms, covering a variety of classes of business including terrorism, property, energy and casualty contractors’ all risks.

John Eldridge is the Chief Commercial Officer at Aventum Group.

John joined the group in January 2020. He has over 15 years’ experience within financial services, previously holding MD roles in retail insurance broking, wholesale insurance broking and London market underwriting environments.

John has a track record of working alongside founders to drive strategy execution, corporate development and value creation.

He has worked with the board to establish group strategy and objectives, reconfigure corporate and management structure, and deliver enhanced MI and analytics, including the introduction of an actuarial function.  

Dean Pitts is the Chief Distribution Officer at Aventum Group.

Dean has over 30 years’ Lloyd’s market experience. Prior to joining Aventum Dean held senior positions at Markel where he was managing director for property and previous to that spent almost 25 years at Liberty Syndicates and its former companies, which saw him become head of insurance. Here he had overall responsibility for all underwriting classes, including property, marine, contingent lines and financial lines.

He is a former chairman of the Lloyd’s Non-Marine Association Worldwide Property Panel and remains a well-known and respected market-leading property underwriter.

Dean has oversight of global underwriting for the group, while also driving underwriting strategy, performance and goals.

Neil Milner is the chief people officer at Aventum Group.

Neil has over 24 years’ experience in the London insurance market, and first joined Aventum in December 2006 as a broking and development manager. His first responsibility was to act as broker for the first London market lineslip the group placed. He has held various roles with the company since then including commercial director, managing director of Consilium’s UK business, and group operations director.

In March 2020 Neil was appointed chief people officer and is currently tasked with developing a first class human resource team to ensure we attract, retain and develop top talent, while also ensuring we have state of the art office and remote working facilities in place.

Canan Oral is the director of financial operations at Aventum Group.

She joined Aventum in 2005 when it was a small retail broker as an accounts administrator and was appointed finance director in 2007 after a successful couple of years of growth within the company.

Over the years Canan has developed and built a successful IBA team, which now control £500m of GWP. Acting as client money manager, she has ensured operational compliance with CASS and client money, reporting to the board. She has ownership of all insurance ledger controls including bank recs and segregation of duties.

Simon Piggott is the chief risk officer at Aventum Group.

He started at Aventum in February 1998 and since then has had various managerial positions in operations and IT, claims, and compliance, to assist the business in reaching its goals.

He is a diligent and conscientious risk and compliance professional with extensive experience in and oversight of, the company governance, information security, regulatory compliance, insurance and operational risk.

Simon is experienced in translating regulatory and legislative requirements into practical working processes and solutions, and therefore protecting and managing aspects of risk to the organisation, its employees, clients, reputation, assets and interests of stakeholders.

Matt Field is the Chief Marketing Officer for Aventum Group. Matt assists all group businesses with their growth strategies and leads the sales team to build strong relationships with brokers across the UK.

He joined the group in August 2016 to establish a northern office. He has spent 10 years working in sales and marketing roles within the insurance industry, starting at a legal expenses and add-on product intermediary.

If he wasn’t working for Aventum, Matt would probably be travelling Europe watching Liverpool Football Club win more European Cups

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Tom Downs is the chief operating officer (COO) of Aventum Group and is a member of the executive committee and Aventum board.

Tom oversees group operations, including IT, project management, data and system governance, MI (non-accounting) and claims. Prior to joining the group, Tom held various roles at AEGIS London and Canopius Managing Agents.

Tom specialises in business change and transformation, including the implementation of enterprise technology solutions and the management of complex operational projects.

Tony Lawrence is the Chief Development Officer of Aventum. His role is to build out Aventum’s digital business in a way that adds value to our clients, insurer partners and shareholders.

He has over 25 years’ experience in insurance, including as CEO of Imperium Insurance Management for six years from November 2014, which he co-founded with Aventum CEO David Bearman. Prior to this he spent over 10 years at Towergate in a variety of roles. Tony is ACII qualified and also has an MBA from Cass Business School.

Tony has three young boys, so when he is not working for Aventum, he spends a lot of time as a taxi driver. When he can, he likes to pursue all sports, especially golf, cycling and windsurfing.