Arkansas: New Year to Bring a New Insurance Chief

The big news for the old year is that Arkansas will kick off the New Year with a new insurance commissioner. Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on Dec. 7, 2004, named Julie Benafield Bowman of Little Rock as insurance department head.

Bowman begins her term Jan. 15, 2005. She replaces Mike Pickens, who has held the office since 1997. Pickens plans to return to private law practice, according to a spokesperson at the Arkansas Insurance Department.

Bowman has served as chief executive officer of the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission (AWCC) since May 1998. Before joining the commission, she was the general counsel for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority from 1996-1998, the attorney supervisor for the workers’ comp fraud investigation unit of the state insurance department from 1993-1996 and a deputy prosecuting attorney in the state’s Sixth Judicial District before that.

“There were several outstanding candidates to take the position of insurance commissioner,” the governor said when announcing the appointment at a Dec. 7 news conference. “But Julie had a solid track record of managing a large state agency and of being an attorney. She brings years of experience in state government, a commitment to conservative business principles and excellent leadership skills. Mike Pickens has helped make Arkansas a national leader in properly regulating the insurance industry. Julie will be able to build on the great work Mike has done with the help of the quality staff that’s already in place at the Insurance Department.”

At the AWCC, Bowman helped develop a series of seminars across the state for small business owners, and expanded the services of the commission’s health and safety division. In announcing her exit from the commission, the AWCC noted, “During her tenure at the [insurance department] fraud unit, Bowman prosecuted numerous cases of workers’ compensation fraud and successfully tried and won a conviction in the first Arkansas jury trial regarding this subject.”

Bowman is on the executive board of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions and is president-elect of the organization. A past president of the Southern Association of Workers’ Compen-sation Administrators, Bowman was listed in 2001 by Arkansas Business as one of the state’s most outstanding leaders younger than 40. She received her law degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law in 1989.

Pickens, a former president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, began serving in the commissioner’s post on Jan. 15, 1997. He was reappointed to a second four-year term in 2001. Prior to his appointment as insurance chief, Pickens was a partner in the Little Rock law firm of Friday, Eldredge and Clark where he practiced in the areas of insurance defense, representing policyholders in personal injury and workers’ compensation litigation.

From April through June of this year Pickens spent time in Iraq working with a contractor to the U.S. Agency for International Development, helping to write insurance law as part of an economic development initiative.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Pickens was paid $103,989 a year as head of the insurance department. Bowman will make the same amount, a jump up from the $101,575 she earns at the AWCC.

Topics Workers' Compensation Arkansas