Aston Lark has promoted Bethan Jones (pictured) to the newly-created role of integration director, in charge of overseeing the smooth integration of the firm’s acquisitions.
The Goldman Sachs-backed chartered insurance brokerage has made a string of acquisitions in recent months, and it has opened its Ireland operations after several swoops in that market.
Jones started her insurance career as a broker at Thomas Carroll in 2004, where she gained chartered broker status before moving into a group operations role. She and her family relocated from Wales to Kent in 2017 before she joined Aston Scott, which later merged with Lark Group to form Aston Lark.
In 2019, Jones became part of Aston Lark’s board, leading the project office, applications and data & analytics teams. She retains these responsibilities as she takes over the responsibility for integrating the group’s various acquisitions.
“It won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that Aston Lark has been rather busy on the acquisition front over the last couple of years,” said Peter Blanc, group CEO of Aston Lark. “We are determined to become the UK and Ireland’s most trusted chartered insurance broker and each acquisition that we make helps to make us stronger as a business. It is, however, absolutely vital that we don’t just ‘collect brokers’ but instead carefully plan and integrate each acquisition so that it truly feels part of Aston Lark and enables both the vendors and the rest of Aston Lark to benefit fully from joining forces.
“Bethan has been with Aston Lark for almost four years and is our ‘go-to’ expert for all things operational. As a Chartered insurance broker in her own right, Bethan has a completely unique skillset – she understands insurance broking but also truly understands systems, data, MI and the importance of integration. We are therefore delighted to announce that we have promoted Bethan into this role and her appointment should give any companies that are thinking of joining forces with Aston Lark the confidence that they are in very safe hands.”
