
Lisa Quest Appointed As CEO Of Marsh UK; Chris Lay To Retire
Marsh has appointed Lisa Quest as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for the UK, effective April 6, 2026. She will continue her role as Head of UK and Ireland at Oliver Wyman and will be based in London. Quest will succeed Chris Lay, who is retiring from the company after more than 40 years of service.
Quest is a business leader who works with public sector organisations on productivity, digital capability deployment, and operational transformation. She has advised government departments, public bodies, and public-private partnerships on improving service delivery and value for public expenditure. Her work covers strategy, organisational structure, cultural change, and operational processes. Quest has experience in advising on cross-sector issues such as economic crime and regulation of technology firms. Her expertise includes data and analytics, workforce planning, and organisational design. In addition to client work, she contributes to global research on the role of data in the public sector through the Oliver Wyman Forum. She is also a Visiting Academic Fellow at the London School of Economics.
Lay is the CEO of Marsh McLennan UK, a position he assumed in March 2023, working across Marsh, Mercer, Guy Carpenter, and Oliver Wyman. He has also served as CEO of Marsh UK since 2018. He has over three decades of experience with Marsh McLennan and has held leadership roles across the UK, EMEA, North America, and global operations. His responsibilities have included leading operations in Canada, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Russia, and Nordic regions, along with roles in business development, sales, and captive solutions. He holds a BSc (Econ) Honours degree from University College London. Lay is an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute, a Chartered Insurance Practitioner, and President of The Insurance Institute of London.




