Basil Morris is Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at The Hanover Insurance Group, a diversified domestic property and casualty insurer with roughly $6 billion in premium. Reporting to the CEO, he leads the strategy team and the company’s strategic planning process. He is also responsible for the strategy presentations delivered to The Hanover’s Board of Directors. In this role, Morris guides long-term planning through market and competitor assessments, trend analysis, and scenario planning.
Much of his work focuses on turning strategy into growth. He has led targeted strategic sprints that created accelerated growth initiatives across small commercial, specialty insurance, excess and surplus lines, and wholesale distribution. In addition, he integrated the company’s customer strategy and launched the Executive Customer Council, which he chairs. He is also a former chair and current member of The Hanover’s Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Executive Council.
Before joining The Hanover in its current capacity, Morris spent more than eleven years at Nationwide Insurance. As Vice President of Corporate Strategy, he led the strategic planning process for an $18 billion P&C business and partnered closely with its president. During that time, he helped transform a primarily exclusive-agent personal lines carrier into a national P&C carrier with half of its premium in commercial lines. Earlier, as an Assistant Vice President, he led corporate projects spanning digital marketing, distribution, brokerage, and commercial lines strategy.
Morris also brings deep experience from outside insurance. Earlier in his career, he held senior consumer and small business lending roles at Fleet Bank, First USA, and Signet Bank, where he built lending businesses worth more than a billion dollars and led major turnarounds. He began his career as a consultant and engagement manager at McKinsey & Company.
Morris holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Columbia University and an MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. He also serves on several boards, including as a trustee of Anna Maria College. For an insurtech audience, Basil Morris offers a strategist’s view of how established P&C carriers grow, transform, and compete in a changing market.
