People – East
Starkweather & Shepley Insurance Brokerage Inc., headquartered in East Providence, R.I., has promoted Sean Cottrell and Elizabeth Lowe to senior vice presidents.
Cottrell is the practice leader for the Human Service practice group, as well as Starkweather’s Benefits Solutions sales manager. He joined Starkweather & Shepley in 2006, starting as an account executive.
Lowe is based out of the brokerage’s Westwood, Mass., office. She is also the practice group leader of Starkweather’s Real Estate Risk Solutions, an industry specific practice group focused solely on assisting and guiding real estate investment trusts (REITs), private equity investment firms and other large real estate owners, managers and developers toward efficient risk options faced by the real estate marketplace. Additionally, Lowe and the Starkweather Real Estate Solutions team are specialists in aiding clients in navigating construction, development and environmental exposures.
Prior to joining Starkweather & Shepley Insurance Brokerage Inc., Lowe was a senior risk management consultant at Robert M. Currey & Associates of Boston, Mass., where she worked for more than seven years.
MMG Insurance Co., a Presque Isle, Maine-headquartered regional property and casualty insurance company, has hired Derek Hochradel as vice president of commercial lines, effective July 31, 2017.
Hochradel brings more than 20 years of experience in middle market commercial lines management and underwriting to this role.
His background includes responsibilities in commercial lines products, underwriting talent development and loss control with large regional carriers. Hochradel has also worked with independent agents throughout his career as part of territorial and product expansion.
MMG Insurance Co. has operations in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Hochradel is a native of Ohio and will relocate to northern Maine in his new role.
The Arbella Insurance Group, a Quincy, Mass.-headquartered regional property and casualty insurance company, has appointed Karen Jansky as director of application development in information technology.
Jansky will report to Matthew Postulka, assistant vice president of information technology.
She began her career at Arbella in 1998 as a programmer consultant, working on the Personal Lines Information System (PLIS) application. Soon after, she took on increasing levels of responsibility and advanced to manager of the PLIS team and then manager of the personal lines and commercial lines portfolios. In 2013, she began managing Arbella’s customer and agent portals, as well as the company’s internet presence. By 2016, Jansky was leading Arbella’s CAM, personal lines and commercial lines portfolios.
Arbella provides personal and business insurance in Massachusetts and Connecticut and business insurance in Rhode Island and New Hampshire
KMRD Partners, a Warrington, Penn.-based boutique risk management and human capital solutions firm, has hired Kirk Salmon to its risk management team.
As a sales and relationship manager, Salmon will work with prospects to evaluate their risk and human capital management programs versus KMRD’s benchmarks. Once a relationship is established, Salmon will lead the KMRD Service team to provide customer service.
Prior to joining KMRD Partners, Salmon was employed as a sales executive with a title insurance company.
Vanguard Claims Administration Inc., a Woodbury, N.J.-based insurance agency, has hired Paul J. Graf as vice president of operations.
With more than 27 years of multi-line claims management experience in the property and casualty insurance industry, Graf will oversee the daily operations of both Vanguard and the Vanguard Adjusters Group Inc.
In addition, he will be responsible for expanding independent adjuster operations into the Central Eastern Region, including Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. His responsibilities also include increasing capacity for TPA services in both the domestic and international Lloyd’s marketplace, as well as launching Vanguard Recovery Services – a new entity providing subrogation recovery services.
Prior to joining Vanguard, Graf served as the senior vice president of a regional claims management firm that provided third party administrator, subrogation recovery, independent field adjustment and litigation management services. He also filled the role of regional claims manager for Utica National Insurance Co.