People and Places

David Molchan has been appointed regional advertising manager for Insurance Journal East. Molchan has extensive experience in business-to-business advertising sales and ad sales management at several trade magazine publishers.

Most recently, Molchan served as the regional sales manager for the eastern United States at Lightwave magazine, published by Pennwell Publishing. Prior to that, he spent more than 10 years at Electronic Component News, serving first as a regional sales manager and then advancing to the position of national sales manager with the magazine, published by Chilton Publishing and Cahners Publishing, respectively.

In his new position at Wells Publishing, Molchan will work closely with Insurance Journal‘s current advertisers, as well as prospective advertisers, in the Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Delaware and Maryland regions. Molchan can be reached by e-mail at dmolchan@insurancejournal.com, by phone at (610) 293-1114, or by postal mail at 15 Highview Drive, Suite 301, Radnor, Pa., 19087.

Dave Thomas, managing editor of Insurance Journal Southeast, has been appointed to the position of online editor. In this new position, Thomas will oversee all editorial content for InsuranceJournal.com and ClaimsGuides. com. Thomas will work closely with members of the Insurance Journal editorial team and Web site development team to provide strategic direction for Well’s Publishing’s online operations. Thomas will continue to serve as IJ’s Southeast managing editor.

Prior to joining Insurance Journal, Thomas served as a sports editor for the La Jolla Light newspaper in San Diego. Thomas has been a freelance sportswriter for the La Jolla Village News in San Diego since July 2001.

St. Louis-based moving and storage industry carrier Vanliner Insurance Co. announced that Gale Preston has been named chief operating officer and executive vice president.

Preston has been with Vanliner, a subsidiary of UniGroup, for the past 25 years. Prior to being named to her new position, she served as Vanliner’s vice president of underwriting and marketing for 10 years.

Omaha, Neb.-based small business workers’ compensation carrier FirstComp named David E. Thomas as its new treasurer and chief financial officer. He had served as an executive consultant since the fall of 2003. Before joining FirstComp, Thomas spent 17 years at Carmel, Ind.-based Monroe Guaranty Insurance Co. In 1991, he led a highly leveraged employee buyout of Monroe’s former owner and, in doing so, the company became the only property/casualty insurer in the United States wholly-owned by its employees. Thomas joined Monroe Guaranty Insurance in 1984 and served as chief information officer, chief financial officer, chief operating officer and, ultimately, president and CEO.

Thomas also served as CIO and CFO for Indiana Lumbermens Mutual Insurance Co. in Indianapolis for nine years. Prior to that assignment, he held senior-level systems development positions with United Fire & Casualty Insurance Co. of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Progressive Corp. in Mayfield Village, Ohio. In both assignments, he was responsible for moving the technology platform used for operations to multiple decentralized locations through a migration from batch processing to online, real-time environments.

Frank Baranek was named managing director of Insurance Resource Consultants of Chicago. In his new role, he will provide strategic planning, merger and acquisition due diligence and operational consulting for IRC’s national corporate development practice serving wholesalers and MGAs.

Prior to joining IRC, Baranek was executive vice president and chief operating officer of one of the largest wholesale brokerages in the United States. During his career, he has held officer-level positions with responsibilities for MGAs and reinsurance brokerages. He was also CEO of one of the largest distributors of insurance products for banks.

American E&S Insurance Brokers announced that Glenda Wertz has joined the firm as assistant vice president and will be located in Minneapolis, Minn.

Wertz has over 20 years of experience in the financial services area brokering directors and officers and errors and omissions accounts to various companies, doing forms comparisons, manuscripting and limits analysis on companies of various sizes for retail clients.

Timothy K. Kovac has joined the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents as director of business and compliance affairs. In his new position with PIA, Kovac will develop compliance materials that take rules and regulations and fashion them into desktop practices for PIA member agents, and head up PIA National’s agency contract review program. He will also monitor and attend meetings of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and serve as liaison to the PIA National Business Issues Committee.

Kovac, an attorney, previously served as a supervising analyst with the American Insurance Association (AIA) in Washington, D.C., where he headed a team of legal analysts charged with advising property/casualty insurers on compliance requirements pertaining to state and federal laws and regulations. Prior to joining AIA in 1999, Kovac served as a law clerk with the Office of the Attorney General of Maryland and the Office of the State’s Attorney in Montgomery County, Md.