People – Southeast

Frankie Silva has been named assistant vice president of underwriting at GEICO’s regional office in Lakeland, Fla. Silva previously served as assistant vice president of underwriting in the company’s San Diego regional office. Silva succeeds Don Robinson, who was named regional vice president of GEICO’s Midwest region.

Silva began his career at GEICO in 1993, as an insurance counselor in the company’s Macon, Ga., regional office. In 1995, he was named sales and service supervisor and served in a variety of supervisory capacities until being named a manager in 1999.

In 2001, Silva was promoted to manager of sales and service and a year later was named director of sales and service in GEICO’s Virginia Beach, Va., location. In 2005, he relocated to GEICO’s corporate headquarters in Chevy Chase, Md., where he served as a sales process coordinator prior to becoming assistant vice president of underwriting in San Diego in 2007.

Silva holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Mercer University in Macon, Ga.

Orchid Underwriters Insurance Agency, LLC, a specialty underwriter of property insurance focusing on coastal properties, has named Lynda Butler as chief financial officer. She will also become a member of the Executive Management Committee at Orchid, along with Chairman Ken LeStrange, President Brad Emmons, CIO Chuck Fillizola, and Executive Vice President Tim Byrne.

As CFO, Butler will be responsible for all accounting and financial functions within Orchid, and will be a key interface with the company’s majority owner, Gryphon Investors. As a member of the Executive Management Committee, she will help lead Orchid’s organic and acquisition growth strategy.

According to LeStrange, Butler’s background in acquiring and integrating companies will enhance Orchid’s ability to achieve its strategic vision.

Butler comes to Orchid from Nationwide Insurance, where she has worked since 1993, most recently as CFO/VP – Nationwide Insurance Brand Property and Casualty Division. Prior to that, she was CFO at Allied Insurance, and earlier, she served as CFO at Farmland Insurance.

Butler began her career at KPMG in Audit Services. She holds a B.S. from the University of Dayton. Butler is a Certified Public Accountant in Ohio and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Ohio Society of Certified Public Accountants.

In November 2014, private equity firm Gryphon Investors made a majority investment in the company.

Orchid Underwriters is based in Vero Beach, Fla., and specializes in providing specialty insurance products for homeowners and other difficult-to-insure properties throughout the United States and the Caribbean.

IFG Companies has named Sophia J. DeCouto as vice president and head of the Primary Property Unit within its Brokerage Property Division. DeCouto comes to IFG Companies with experience in excess and surplus lines property underwriting, including primary property, shared and layered property and national accounts property. DeCouto will be based in IFG Companies’ Atlanta office and looks to strengthen and expand IFG Companies’ Primary Property Unit.

Prior to joining IFG, DeCouto was a vice president with Axis Insurance Co. Before that, she served in increasingly senior property underwriting positions over almost a decade with Allied World Assurance Co. DeCouto began her career in insurance as an insurance brokering assistant with Freisenbruch-Meyer Insurance Services Limited in Bermuda.

DeCouto holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

IFG Companies is a privately held insurance group in the U.S., writing property & casualty insurance on both a non-admitted basis and an admitted basis. IFG Companies’ two principal underwriting groups include Commercial Accounts and Specialty Accounts. Coverages are underwritten by IFG’s affiliated insurers: The Burlington Insurance Co., First Financial Insurance Co., Alamance Insurance Co. and Guilford Insurance Co.

Global reinsurer SCOR has appointed Spencer Alridge as Group chief compliance officer of the company’s Central Group Functions. Alridge will report to Romain Launay, general secretary, as of June 1. He will be based in Charlotte, N.C.

Alridge began his career in 1992 at law firms in Charlotte as a civil litigator in private practice. In 2002 he joined the Transamerica Reinsurance legal department where he first managed global litigation and arbitration, and then law and compliance for non-U.S. business operations in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, rising to deputy general counsel in 2007. He also became responsible for the U.S. claims adjudication unit from 2006-2009 and again beginning in 2015. After SCOR acquired the Transamerica Reinsurance business in 2011, he continued to be responsible for Latin American and Canadian legal matters with SCOR Global Life Americas, where he also assumed responsibility for non-U.S. reinsurance treaty units in 2014.

Topics USA