People & Places

National

Global reinsurance broker Gallagher Re appointed Linda Johnson vice chairperson for its North American team.

Johnson will be responsible for producing new business for large casualty and structured reinsurance solutions across North America, with a focus on New York and Minneapolis. She will report to Tom Wafer, chairman, Gallagher Re North America.

She brings more than 30 years of industry experience to Gallagher Re. She previously spent 15 years at TigerRisk Partners, where she was a founding partner, executive team member, and most recently served as Global Legacy Solutions Practice leader. Prior to TigerRisk, Johnson was a senior executive with Aon Benfield.

Resilience promoted CJ Pruzinsky to global head of underwriting and sales. Previously, he led the underwriting team at the company’s managing general agency.

Pruzinsky will lead the introduction of the Resilience Solution into the global cyber insurance market. This new role brings together both sides of the security and insurance ecosystem to enable Resilience’s broker partners to offer clients one solution for assessing, measuring, and managing their cyber risk.

Before joining Resilience in 2021, CJ spent more than 15 years underwriting specialty lines, including errors and omissions, media liability, and information security and privacy for middle-market and large clients.

East

Safety National announced that Dennis Zervos has retired as regional vice president – underwriting.

Zervos has spent over 30 years in the industry, joining the St. Louis, Missouri-based company in 2009 in conjunction with the opening of Safety National’s New York, New York, office, where he served as a member of Safety National’s casualty leadership team.

Jeffrey Levans, vice president – insurance underwriting, will succeed Zervos to provide large casualty underwriting management and oversight of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic territories. He brings 20 years of experience, including serving as Philadelphia branch manager and vice president at AIG, and vice president, commercial casualty at Everest Insurance.

Levans will operate out of Safety National’s Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York regional offices.

Insurance producer trade organization Big I New York elected Edward F. Walsh as its chair of the board for the 2023-2024 term.

Walsh is chief executive officer of Walsh Duffield Companies, which has offices in Buffalo, Rochester, and Medina, New York.

A past member of the Big I New York board of directors, Walsh has chaired the group’s finance committee and served as chair of the board of IAAC, the group’s member services division.

David Bodenstein of Mike Preis Inc. in Callicoon was elected to a one-year term as vice-chair and secretary-treasurer.

Big I New York members also elected and re-elected the following regional directors to two-year terms: Matthew Maguire of The Patrick Maguire Agency in Malone, east-north region; Douglas Benz of New Buffalo Insurance Agency in Buffalo, west-central region; Marianne B. McCormick of NBT Agency in Vestal, west-central region; Michael Zwas of The Insurance Marketplace in Rochester, west-central region; David H. Borg of Borg Risk Management Services in Huntington, metro-suburban region; and James Bastian of Advantage Partners Inc. in Great Neck, metro-suburban region.

Big I NY members elected Ronald Brunell of Acrisure LLC, The Signature B&B Cos. in Garden City, as national director. Brunell will serve a three-year term and represent Big I NY’s members at the national association. Brunell is a third-generation independent insurance agent.

Lane Rubin of The Excelsior Group in Valley Stream won a two-year term as member representative on the nominating committee. Rubin is a past chair of the Big I New York board.

FCCI Insurance Group hired Phil Shepard to lead the expansion of its surety line of business into New England.

FCCI is now writing contract and commercial surety bonds in the six New England states — Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Shepard has more than 30 years of experience in the financial industry, including extensive experience in contract and commercial surety for the past 15 years, most recently as bond manager and head underwriter at Colonial Surety Coy.

Shepard is based in Keene, New Hampshire. FCCI is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida.

Midwest

Valley Insurance Agency Alliance (VIAA), headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, hired Trish Von Ruden as personal foundation coach.

Von Ruden will coach new and existing team members on property/casualty best practices and assist new alliance members with core technology implementation.

Von Ruden has over 20 years of insurance industry experience, including roles at Lang Insurance Agency, FBBInsurance and Bridges Insurance Agency.

Holmes Murphy named Amy Tanny as a vice president of property casualty.

Tanny will serve as a resource for client renewal placements and help develop carrier and wholesaler relations and strategy.

Tanny most recently spent 17 years with Cottingham & Butler as the vice president of the risk management practice.

Holmes Murphy is headquartered in Waukee, Iowa.

Matt McGrath joined Alliant Insurance Services’ Alliant Americas division as vice president.

Based in Chicago, McGrath will focus on designing, implementing, and managing comprehensive risk and insurance solutions for a diverse and growing client base throughout the Midwest.

McGrath has more than 10 years of experience working to build strong relationships that support ongoing business objectives through tailored solutions. He also has an extensive background in the financial sector, which adds additional depth to his role as an insurance professional.

Prior to joining Alliant, McGrath was a business development consultant with a large insurance and financial services firm.

UFG Insurance appointed Controller Kelly Allsup as an assistant vice president within corporate finance. She is based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Allsup previously served as 2VP at Ameritras. Before that she spent 13 years at Transamerica, including several years as director, finance – capital and regulatory reporting. She began her career at State Farm.

South Central

Stephens Insurance LLC, an affiliate of Stephens Inc., hired Chris Bettina as a senior vice president within the property and casualty practice.

Bettina brings nearly 15 years of experience in the insurance industry that spans global insurance and captive markets. Bettina most recently served as a senior vice president at Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

She is based in the Houston, Texas, office of Stephens Insurance. Stephens Inc. is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Graham-Rogers Insurance promoted Jana Owens to operations lead with standard lines services (SLS). Additionally,

Amanda Walker has been promoted to personal lines underwriter in the SLS division.

Owens comes from a background in standard lines services. Before joining the team, she adjusted workers’ compensation claims at Claims Management, Inc. for over three years. Owens will continue her underwriting assistant role concurrently.

Walker’s insurance career began as an underwriting assistant for standard lines in December 2016.

Graham-Rogers is headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and serves Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee and rural Texas.

Southeast

Virginia Christy has been named deputy commissioner of Property and Casualty at the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.

Since 2017, Christy has been the director of the Property and Casualty Oversight unit at OIR, and her affidavits and analyses of carriers’ financial straits have accompanied delinquency proceedings notices. Before leading the oversight unit, Christy, an attorney, was OIR’s chief assistant general counsel. Prior to joining the office, she was an assistant public defender in Florida.

Sheryl Parker has been named the state’s first deputy commissioner of Market Regulation, overseeing insurer reporting, examination and consumer protection requirements that were beefed up by recent legislation.

Parker has been OIR’s director of P/C market regulation since 2019, handling examinations and investigations of insurance companies. She started at OIR in 2012 and had previously worked at the Department of Financial Services. Before that, Parker was a licensed insurance agent in Florida and North Carolina.

Kansas City-based Lockton named Eric Collison, formerly with Liberty Mutual Insurance, as vice president and manager of Lockton’s Memphis office.

Collison also previously worked with Kemmons Wilson Insurance Group and is experienced in property/casualty coverage for the hospitality, real estate and construction industries in the Memphis market. He will oversee the build out of a new Lockton P/C unit in Memphis.

West

Island Insurance named Reid Hokama vice president, personal lines and marketing.

Hokama has nearly three decades of financial experience and most recently was vice president and investment strategy manager in Central Pacific Bank’s Wealth Management Group.

Other previous positions include director of research at Honolulu’s Tao Investments and senior financial analyst at Electronic Arts in California.

Island is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii.

PCF Insurance Services, based in Lehi, Utah, named Rocky Steele senior vice president of legal and compliance.

Steele oversees PCF’s legal and compliance function.

He has also served as co-founder and chairman of the board at Ascend Education and vice president of business development at TestOut Corp., and has worked in the natural resource-based energy industry.

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