DAC Beachcroft has opened a new office in Miami with the hire of a former senior lawyer at US insurer AIG.

The new base will be led by Sascha Stullenberg, who has joined the firm as business development manager for Latin America. He was previously associate general counsel for the Latin America and Caribbean region for AIG's property casualty division, a role he held between 2012 and 2014.

The office will work in tandem with the UK firm's existing practice in Latin American, where it has a presence in Mexico, Chile and Colombia.

Stullenberg will be joined on a rotating basis by six partners from across the firm's Latin American network. A spokeperson said that the firm expects to make further additions to the Miami office in due course.

Managing partner Paul Murray said that the opening "marks a further important step in the firm's international expansion plans."

The firm's head of insurance and managing partner elect David Pollitt called the office "the final piece of the jigsaw," and described Miami as "a rapidly growing market through which an increasing amount of Latin American insurance and reinsurance business flows."

DAC Beachcroft has targeted the Latin America market for growth in recent years. In January it announced that it had entered an exclusive alliance with Spanish insurance firm Munoz Arribas.

In 2012 it entered into a three-way merger with Chilean firms SegurosLex and Amunategui & Cia, and in the same year launched a Mexico office with the hire of a four-partner team from US law firm Thompson & Knight.

In 2013 it opened in Colombia after a merger with local firm De La Torre & Monroy Abogados Asociados, and in 2014 it opened a representative office in New York as part of an alliance deal with Manhattan-based specialist insurance firm Abrams Gorelick Friedman & Jacobson.

The firm also has alliances with Brazilian firms Wongtschowski & Zanotta and JBO Advocacia.