People and Places

Ron Harder, president and CEO of Neenah, Wis.-based Jewelers Mutual Insurance Co., announced a management restructuring, effective June 1. Harder explained that he has been evaluating the company’s management structure as part of an overall succession planning process for all levels of management.

Mike Maley, vice president of underwriting, will assume expanded responsibility for personal and commercial lines underwriting, uniting these areas into one functional division.

David Sexton, vice president of loss prevention, will establish a loss prevention department aimed at further strengthening Jewelers Mutual’s expertise in this area and enhances the services it provides to its jeweler customers.

Sue Fritz was promoted to vice president of marketing and communications. She has led the Communications Department and supported the company’s marketing efforts for 10 years. An outside search for a chief financial officer is ongoing.

Don Mango, the vice president of research and development at Kansas City-based GE’s Employers Reinsurance Corp., was awarded the 2004 Charles A. Hachemeister Prize by the Casualty Actuarial Society for his paper on reinsurance pricing. The announcement of the award was made at the CAS spring meeting in Colorado Springs, Colo. Mango’s paper, Capital Consumption: An Alternative Methodology for Pricing Reinsurance, proposes a pricing method which “eliminates the need for capital allocation and release and creates scenarios that more closely model actual contract capital usage.” This is the third prize won by this paper. It also won best call paper for CAS and the inaugural Ferguson Prize sponsored by General Re for best reinsurance paper. To date, Mango has garnered seven prizes for his papers on risk analytics. ERC offers reinsurance and commercial insurance.

InVEST, an education program aimed at strengthening the insurance industry by attracting a large pool of qualified insurance recruits, announced that Richard H. Roy Jr., chairman and CEO of Afni Insurance Services Inc., has been named to its board of directors. Roy’s experience spans two decades and involves various activities in the property/casualty insurance industry.

He worked with multiple agency management vendors throughout the 1980s and 1990s in different management and executive roles, always focused around development and marketing. In 1999, he co-founded Afni, which expanded his knowledge of 24/7 customer care solutions to include specialized technologies and outsourcing services.

Itasca, Ill.-based brokerage giant Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. announced that Joseph A. Dutcher has joined the company as vice president of internal audit. Dutcher began his career at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in 1976. In 1988, he joined Aegon USA where he served as vice president and director of internal audit. Most recently, he was the director of global audit advisory services for Manpower Inc.

The Independent Insurance Agents of Wisconsin announced the new slate of officers and directors that were recently elected. Jeffrey A. Thiel of Fitzgerald, Clayton, James & Kasten in Mequon, Wis., was elected as president for 2004-05. New officers include President-Elect Bob Marsh of the Marsh Agency in Rice Lake and Secretary-Treasurer Bob Nadolske of the Monroe Agency in Oshkosh.

New directors include Michael Hierl of Hierl Insurance Inc. in Fond du Lac, Andrew Schumacher of Green Bay’s Warren Group and Linda Steiner of Johnson Insurance Inc. in Racine. All terms begin Sept. 1, 2004. IIAW, headquartered in Madison, has more than 3,500 members.

IIAW also named Jim Leadholm Jr. the state’s agent of the year at its annual convention May 6 in Madison. Leadholm, of Leadholm-LaMere Insurance in Amery, Wis., was cited for his commitment to his profession and his fellow agents. He is a past president of the Independent Insurance Agents of Western Wisconsin, where he worked to provide education and social opportunities for his peers. He is also a member of IIAW’s Smaller Agencies Committee and past chairman of the Training and Development Committee.

Meanwhile, Dale Kalschuer of Madison’s Neckerman Agency was named young agent of the year. Kalschuer was honored for his service on the IIAW’s Young Agents Committee as well as his “contributions to the success” of the inaugural Midwest Young Agents Conference held in 2003 in Wisconsin Dells. More than 300 participants from three states attended.

ACE INA, a U.S.-based operating division of the ACE Group of Cos., announced that Karen Gordon, vice president and manager of filing and regulatory services for ACE INA, has been elected to the board of trustees of the Professional Liability Underwriting Society. An active PLUS member, Gordon has previously served in a number of leadership roles for PLUS. Since 2002, she has been a member of the national PLUS Education Committee, which is responsible for organizing the society’s annual conference and supporting regional events.

She is the chair of the PLUS Mid-Atlantic Region Steering Committee, former vice chair and a steering committee member since 1999. In addition, she served as chair of PLUS’ Mid-Atlantic Region Education Committee in 1999 and 2000 and is a frequent speaker at national and regional PLUS conferences. Gordon joined ACE INA in 1999 as vice president and manager of product development, and has nearly 20 years of experience in the insurance field, including 16 years in professional liability disciplines. In her present role managing filing and regulatory services, Gordon is responsible for oversight of product filings and tracking of regulatory changes impacting ACE products.