CEO Coaching & Board-Level Advisory
For Insurance and Reinsurance Leaders Who Want to Lead Better, Not Just Manage More.
Is This You?
You're a CEO or senior leader in re/insurance. You're technically capable. You've earned your seat at the table. But the higher you go, the lonelier it gets - and the harder it becomes to find honest, experienced counsel from someone who has actually sat where you sit.
You might be building something new and need to get the risk function right from the start, not just to satisfy a regulator, but because you know it's the foundation everything else is built on.
Or perhaps the business is established, but something isn't quite working. The culture isn't clicking. The Board isn't functioning as it should. The strategy feels unclear, or the relationships - internally or externally - aren't where they need to be.
You don't need another framework. You need a trusted thought partner with the experience to help you see clearly and act decisively.
Encina Consulting provides CEO coaching, board advisory services, and CRO Expertise for insurance and reinsurance leaders, helping organisations strengthen risk functions, improve governance, and lead with clarity in complex regulatory environments.
What Jon Brings
Jon Macdonald has spent over 30 years working at the highest levels of the global insurance and reinsurance industry - as Group CRO at Royal London, RSA, and Prudential, and in senior roles at Swiss Re, Zurich, Aviva, and PwC. He has served as an executive Board director of a FTSE 100-scale business and advised more than 1,000 C-suite leaders across his career.
He knows what good looks like - and what it actually takes to build it.
Jon works with a small number of CEOs and senior leaders at any one time, offering the kind of sustained, confidential, high-quality support that simply isn't available in a standard consulting engagement.
How Jon Macdonald Can Help You
Building a Risk Function That Works
Getting the risk function right is one of the most consequential decisions a CEO or Board will make. Done well, it protects the business, earns regulatory credibility, and supports long-term growth. Done poorly, it becomes a drag on the organisation - or worse, a liability.
Jon has built risk functions from scratch, reformed underperforming ones, and led risk governance across some of the most complex organisations in the sector. He brings that depth of experience directly to bear - helping you design a function that is proportionate, credible, and genuinely fit for purpose, not just compliant on paper.
Strengthen Organisational Culture
Culture is not a values statement on a wall. It is the sum of thousands of daily decisions, behaviours, and signals, which are mostly invisible until something goes wrong.
Jon works with CEOs and leadership teams to understand what their culture actually is, not just what they wish it were. From there, the work is practical and grounded: identifying where culture is a strength to build on, where it is creating risk, and how to shift it sustainably, through leadership, rather than mandate.
Improve Board Effectiveness and Governance
A high-functioning Board is one of a CEO's most valuable assets. A dysfunctional one can undermine everything.
Jon has sat on and advised Boards across the insurance and reinsurance sector for three decades. He understands the dynamics that make Boards effective: the quality of information flow, the balance of challenge and support, the clarity of roles, and the health of the relationships in the room. He works with Chairs, NEDs and executive teams to strengthen those dynamics, improve decision-making, and create governance that genuinely serves the business.
Strategy and Decision-Making
At the top of any organisation, the decisions are harder, the information is more ambiguous, and the consequences are greater. Jon works as a confidential sounding board for CEOs navigating complex strategic choices - bringing years of senior experience, sharp analytical thinking, and the kind of measured, honest perspective that is genuinely hard to find.
Relationships: Internal, Regulatory, and Stakeholder
How a leader builds and holds relationships with their leadership team, their Board, their regulator, and key stakeholders, is often the difference between a business that scales confidently and one that struggles despite its technical capability. Jon has spent decades building trust-based relationships at the highest levels of the industry. He helps leaders do the same.
A Different Kind of Engagement
This is not coaching by the hour from someone who has read the books. Jon brings real executive experience, genuine sector expertise, and the kind of deep listening and presence that creates the conditions for honest, productive work.
Engagements are tailored, confidential, and built around what the individual and the business actually need - not a standard programme or off-the-shelf methodology.
Who This Is For
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CEOs and Chairs of insurance or reinsurance businesses - start-up, scaling, or established
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Senior leaders stepping into CEO or Board roles for the first time
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Experienced leaders navigating a period of significant change - strategic, cultural, or regulatory
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Founders who want to build something that lasts, not just something that passes authorisation
"The measure of success isn't the quality of the document we produce. It's whether your business is running better when we leave than when we arrived."
Ready to explore whether there's a fit?
A 15-minute conversation costs nothing and clarifies everything.