People – West

Russ McFarren

Calabasas, Calif.-based Lionheart Insurance Services has hired Russ McFarren as an excess and surplus broker. He began his insurance career in Ohio and relocated to Los Angeles in 1963 with the Pacific Indemnity Insurance Company. He has also served with several large wholesalers, most recently at Aris Insurance and at Bliss & Glennon.

Rebecca Banks

Rebecca Banks has joined Excess & Surplus Lines Insurance Brokers Inc. as a surplus lines broker. Banks will be responsible for developing new agencies and adding new carriers for brokerage business. She has served as a retail broker, reinsurance intermediary, surplus lines broker and an insurance company underwriter. She has 30 years of experience in the industry.

Canon Insurance Service announced that Dennis J. Byrne has joined its Woodland Hills, California office. Byrne will be responsible for the new production of general liability, property, directors and officers, errors and omissions, excess/umbrella and related coverages. Byrne has 32 years of underwriting, brokering and managerial excess and surplus experience.

Schifrin, Gagnon & Dickey Inc. hired three employees to run its three new service locations in Sacramento, Fresno and Orange County.

Charles Burns will head the Sacramento office. He has more than 20 years of experience in handling first party property losses. His experience includes personally handling and managing field staff on two earthquakes, two fire and two windstorm catastrophes. He has instructed CPCU candidates and fellow employees in repair and adjustment procedures.

Roger Anderson will be responsible for running the Fresno office. He is a multi-line adjuster with more than 30 years of experience. He has handled first party property and third party property and liability claims in the central valley since 1989.

David Beaton will be responsible for the Orange County office. He has been an independent adjuster for over 30 years. He spent the past 18 years as general adjuster and branch manager for the ASU Group. He specializes in commercial and personal lines property, as well as liability and motor truck cargo.

Rosemarie Townsend and Sharon Fleming have recently joined Portland, Ore.-based McFall General Agency Inc.
Townsend will serve as a commercial multi peril underwriter for McFall’s Gig Harbor, Wash. office. She will be responsible for underwriting new commercial property, casualty and commercial package risk located in Oregon and Washington. Townsend has many years of commercial underwriting experience with companies, general agencies and retail agencies.

Fleming will serve as a commercial transportation underwriter in McFall’s home office in Portland. She will be responsible for underwriting commercial trucking risk garaged in Oregon on a local, intermediate and long haul basis. She has over 25 years of experience in the industry. Fleming spent the last 15 years with a regional general agency writing commercial transportation risk.

The California El Camino Chapter of CPCU installed newly-elected officers and directors. New officers are: President Allen N. Zeichik, Hertz Claims Management; President-Elect Jane A. Frenzel, C.N.A. Insurance; Vice President Peggy L. Brennan, 21st Century Insurance; Secretary Stacey Galvan, ISU Insurance Services; and Treasurer Robert O. Matthews, 21st Century Insurance.

New directors are: William J. “Joe” Wetter, William J. Wetter Insurance & Risk Management Consulting; Stephen E. Pursley, Farmers Insurance Group; and Immediate Past President Rick J. Beno.

James Kelley has joined Washington-based Baldwin Resource Group as a vice president. Kelley has more than 20 years of reinsurance risk management experience in property/casualty and life, accident and health lines. He also has experience in investment banking. Kelley will be responsible for working with healthcare clients to align the risks of healthcare delivery systems.

American International Group Inc.recently made management appointments. David Herzog was named AIG comptroller and elected AIG senior vice president. Robert Gender was named AIG treasurer and elected AIG vice president.

Herzog has served as CFO for AIG’s Worldwide Life Insurance operations since 2004. He previously served as COO and CFO of AIG’s domestic life insurance companies and was elected an AIG vice president in 2003. Herzog joined American General in 2000 as executive vice president and CFO of its life division. Prior to that, he held a number of senior financial positions at General American Life Ins. Co. and its parent, GenAmerica Corp. He also held executive positions at Citicorp Life Ins. Cos. and at Coopers & Lybrand.

Gender served as AIG assistant treasurer since 2000, with principal responsibilities for managing AIG’s banking relations, liquidity and corporate finance. Gender joined AIG in 1998 as director of financial analysis in its treasury department. Prior to that, he was assistant vice president in the treasury department of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, where he served in various capacities since 1984.

Topics AIG