Markel International has appointed Maureen Tomlinson (pictured above) as its first head of AI and launched a dedicated AI Centre of Enablement, in what the division said was its first formalised AI function.
The CoE will sit within the international portfolio analytics team, led by managing director Simon Cooper-Williams, and is tasked with driving AI adoption across Markel International's five businesses.
It will provide education, advisory support, governance and engineering capability, as well as delivering tools to improve the broker and client experience.
Maureen Tomlinson takes on the role alongside her existing position as senior vice president of operations for Markel in Canada, which she has held since 2023. Based in Toronto, she previously spent 11 years at Verisk, formerly Opta Information Intelligence, where she rose to senior vice president of sales and professional services.
The choice of language is deliberate. Unlike a traditional centre of excellence, which centralises expertise and can create bottlenecks, a centre of enablement is designed to distribute capability through a self-service model.
Nordic APIs notes that centres of enablement create more general solutions and best practices, whereas centres of excellence tend to produce a narrower view. For Markel, the structure reflects the need to serve five distinct international businesses without funnelling all AI work through a single team.
The appointment places Markel in step with a broader wave of dedicated AI leadership hires across the insurance sector. Allianz UK promoted data science manager Mansoor Reehana to its first head of AI in October 2025, while AXA named Andreas Schertzinger as group chief data, AI and innovation officer in July 2024.
Zurich Insurance, meanwhile, recruited two senior technology leaders from outside the industry that same October.
Research from Roots Automation's 2025 State of AI Adoption in Insurance report found that while more than 90% of insurers were exploring or testing AI, only 22% had fully deployed solutions in production. Dedicated leadership roles like Maureen Tomlinson's are widely seen as a way to close that gap.
Chief operations officer Carys Lawton-Bryce said Markel views AI as a technology with the potential to support its growth targets, but stressed the importance of responsible deployment.
"Our newly-launched Centre of Enablement will be central to how we leverage AI in a way that makes adoption safe, scalable and business-led, while ensuring responsible governance that stays ahead of regulatory expectations," she said.
Cooper-Williams described Tomlinson's appointment as a move that would strengthen collaboration across all five international businesses and bring "greater consistency and clarity to how AI is developed and deployed."
Tomlinson's earlier career included roles as vice president of analytics and R&D at Verisk and director of personal lines systems at Economical Insurance Group.
