Willis North America's COO Assumes New Responsibilities

Business Wire, Jan 17, 2008

NEW YORK -- Thomas V. Ealy, Willis North America's Chief Operating Officer, has been appointed to lead the company's growing Commercial and Consumer segments for both the U.S. and Canada. Ealy will continue in his current role until a successor is named.

As unveiled at its Investor Day last November, both segments are key to Willis' Shaping Our Future strategy to profitably grow the company. Having engineered Willis' acquisition last summer of InsuranceNoodle[TM], an industry-leading, patented, web-enabled platform that serves small and medium-sized enterprises, Ealy was the natural choice to assume his new responsibilities. The Commercial segment includes not only small and medium-sized enterprises, but also MGA and affinity programs, public entity risk pools, and group captives. The Consumer segment includes personal insurance for high net worth individuals and families along with affinity groups.

These segments are in addition to Willis' two other Shaping Our Future segments, Global Corporate and Corporate, targeting the needs of global, large national, and upper middle market companies.

In Ealy's nearly six years with the company, in addition to COO and his new role, he led its Chicago and Milwaukee offices and helped to create and then led its Client Advocate[R] professional development program in North America. He will relocate to Chicago.

Commenting on the appointment, Joe Plumeri, Willis Group's Chairman and CEO, said: "Smaller businesses and individuals are a big deal to Willis. What Tom is doing is central to our drive to build the industry's first sustainable organic growth company."

Added Don Bailey, CEO of Willis North America, "To place one of our most talented and versatile executives in this role signals its strategic importance and demonstrates our commitment to building a differentiated business model that achieves superior results regardless of industry conditions."

Willis Group Holdings Limited (NYSE:WSH) is a leading global insurance broker, developing and delivering professional insurance, reinsurance, risk management, financial and human resource consulting and actuarial services to corporations, public entities and institutions around the world. Willis has more than 300 offices in some 100 countries, with a global team of approximately 16,000 Associates serving clients in some 190 countries. Additional information on Willis may be found at www.willis.com.