Monday, April 8
Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Talent
W. Marston "Marty" Becker
President and CEO, Alterra Capital
Marty Becker has made his career creating insurance organizations, and few know better than he how to quickly identify talent needs and the people to meet those needs. He will discuss the global competition for talent and the steps U.S. insurers must take to ensure they have the talent they need to achieve their objectives.
Becker has been president and CEO of Alterra, an AAIS member company, since October 2006, and has held several positions with its various subsidiaries.
Before that, he was chief executive of two other Bermuda-based reinsurance companies, and was chairman and CEO of Orion Capital Corporation until its sale to Royal & SunAlliance, where he then served as vice chairman and director until 2000.
During his tenure at Orion Capital that organization owned, among other things, ICAT Holdings a catastrophe risk entity, where Becker came to know Ed Kelly, Joan Zerkovich, and other new members of the AAIS leadership team.
Becker has a strong attachment to and knowledge of the domestic U.S. insurance industry. He has served as non-executive chairman of Hales & Company, a boutique insurance investment bank and private equity investor, as a director of Selective Insurance Group, and as a director of Brickstreet Mutual Ins. Co.
A native of West Virginia, where he still resides, Becker is a graduate of West Virginia University and its law school, and chairman and general partner of West Virginia Media Holdings, which he co-founded in 2001.
Choosing The Right Tools
Thomas Hettinger, ACAS, MAAA,
Property/Casualty Sales and Practice Leader for the Americas, Towers Watson
No one is better prepared to provide a strategic overview of analytical tools in insurance than Tom Hettinger, who has more than 20 years’ experience consulting primary insurance companies on the implementation of enterprise risk management, dynamic financial analysis, and predictive modeling.
Tom has written and spoken on these topics for leading industry publications and groups. Before joining Towers Watson, Tom was a managing director for the actuarial firm EMB America and chief actuary for the 10th largest reinsurance broker in the world.
From his wide range of experience, Tom will provide a strategic level assessment of the analytical tools available to insurers and the factors they need to consider when deciding which ones to acquire.
Company Executive Panel on Tools and Talent
A panel of company executives will follow our “tools and talent” speakers with observations on how their companies choose what types of human and analytical resources to have in-house. The panelists include:
- Edmund J. Kelly, President and CEO of AAIS, Moderator
- R. Douglas Haines, President and CEO of Buckeye Insurance Group
- Dave Kaufman, President and COO, Motorists Insurance Group
- John Clifford, Executive Vice President of Human Resources, Travelers Insurance
Tuesday, April 9
AAIS's Talented Team
The biggest news in this year’s “AAIS Update” segment is the addition of several data and operations experts to AAIS’s established team of product development specialists. Following a strategic overview by Ed Kelly, attendees will hear from members of Ed’s “leadership team” describing current and imminent initiatives at AAIS.
- Deborah Summerlin, CPCU, Vice President of Insurance Lines, and Anton Zalesky, FCAS, MAAA, Chief Actuary, will report on recent and upcoming program filings.
- Bill Bickerton, Senior Director of Data Analytics, will report on initiatives to streamline the stat reporting process and deliver more data reports.
- Truman Esmond, Senior Director of Customer Engagement, will report on initiatives to enhance the delivery of AAIS information through web portals, social media, and other means.
- In addition, Don Parkes will be participating shortly after his arrival as AAIS’s new Vice President of Sales. Don comes to AAIS after serving five years as Vice President for Insurance Solutions at CoreLogic, a leading analytics firm. From that perspective, Don will provide an overview on the status of analytical capabilities in property/casualty insurance.
Global Trends, Local Impacts in Insurance Regulation
Tracey Laws
Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Reinsurance Association of America
When it comes to insurance regulation, the world is coming to our shores. Solvency II and the pressure to standardize U.S. insurance regulation could have profound impacts on U.S. primary companies and the reinsurers who support them.
Tracey will provide an overview of global trends that could affect regulation in the U.S, and offer suggestions on how companies can manage the impact on their operations.
Roundtable Discussions
The business program concludes with roundtable discussions led by members of the AAIS leadership team. The sessions include:
- Executive - led by Ed Kelly, President and CEO
- Personal Lines - led by Susan Luecke, Assistant Vice President for Personal Lines
- Commercial Lines - led by Tony Leist, CPCU, Assistant Vice President for Commercial lines
- Farm & Ag Programs - led by Sherry Taylor, CPCU, AFIS, Manager of Farm and Agribusiness programs
- Inland Marine & Output Programs - a continuation of the inland marine track led by Robert Guevara, Vice President of Inland Maine
Inland Marine Track
Risks and Rewards in Contractors Equipment
This year’s inland marine track will examine current conditions and emerging issues in the market for insuring contractors and mobile equipment, one of the largest classes of inland marine insurance, and one of the classes featured in the AAIS Inland Marine Guide.
The construction sector remains glutted with unused capacity as the economy slowly recovers from the recession and real estate collapse of the late 2000s. Equipment insurers are adapting to those market conditions, plus the increasingly frequent periods of demand surge following natural catastrophes.
Several prominent speakers have been lined up for this program, including:
- Rich Soja, Executive Vice Pesident and Chief Marine Underwriter for Aspen Insurance, based in New York City. Prior to joining Aspen, Rich worked 22 years for Chubb & Son, rising to become Senior Vice President and Worldwide Manager of Chubb Marine Underwriters, also based in New York.
- Mark Groenheide, Director of Marine for Acadia Ins. Co., a W.R. Berkley Company, and a member of the IMUA’s New England Regional Advisory Committee. Before joining Acadia in 2010, Mark held inland marine positions at ACE and Hanover Insurance Group. Rich and Mark will be discussing trends and opportunities in the market for contractors equipment coverage.
- Mark Katz, an attorney and inland marine expert with the law firm Mound Cotton Wollan & Greengrass. Mark often litigates emerging issues in coverage, and will address this session on two growing concerns regarding contractors equipment policies:
- Increased interest in delay in construction coverage for contractors equipment losses; and
- New demands to treat partial equipment losses as total losses when they trigger a voiding of an equipment warranty.
- Paula E. Fleming, Operations Manager for Crawford & Company, a leading company in insurance claims management, speaking on trends in equipment loss claims.
- As always, Robert Guevara, AAIS vice president of inland marine, will be on hand to offer his observations. He will be joined this year by Pamela Nykaza, AAIS senior product development specialist for inland marine.