People
JLT Re (North America) Inc., part of the global provider of reinsurance broking and consultancy, has appointed Alain Bizet as senior vice president in Miami. Alain will join the property treaty team in Miami and focus on the broking efforts for the Caribbean, Central America and broader Latin America Region.
Bizet joins JLT Re from the Odyssey Reinsurance Co., where he was an assistant vice president and senior underwriter. Prior to Odyssey, he worked at Allied World as assistant vice president and senior underwriter focusing on delivering reinsurance to clients.
SUNUP Insurance Services has hired 35-year insurance industry Jim Westerman as president and chief operating officer.
In this role, Westerman will work closely with the SUNUP team to expand the distribution footprint across the U.S. market through the recruitment and appointment of agents, agency developers and regional presidents. Westerman will also be responsible for creating and executing new strategies designed to help accelerate the profitable growth of the organization.
Westerman recently retired from the Farmers Insurance Group of Companies after 35 years of service. He held 18 different positions at Farmers beginning in Personal Lines Underwriting in 1983. The majority of his career was sales, marketing and distribution focused.
Westerman was the state executive director for Oklahoma, SVP Sales in Home Office, and SVP Field Operations for the Eastern Zone and then the Pacific Zone before taking on the role of head of Commercial Sales. The company said his leadership experience in Sales, Marketing and Distribution will be an asset to SUNUP.
Westerman has relocated to Greenville, S.C., for the position.
The GEICO Board of Directors has promoted Pionne Corbin to senior vice president.
Corbin will manage the regional office in Lakeland, Fla., where she will be based, and oversee the company’s Southeast and Midwest regional offices and Centralized Services operation, all of which are in Macon, Ga.
Since June 2016, Corbin had served as vice president of GEICO’s Buffalo, N.Y., regional office. She began her career with GEICO as a management intern at the Fredericksburg, Va., regional office in 1993. After completing the internship in 1996, she was named a claims service representative supervisor. Corbin then moved to the underwriting division, where she was a sales supervisor and then a service manager. In 2004, she managed the new business underwriting division and the re-underwriting division.
Corbin became operations manager of the commercial auto division in 2009 and director of the division in 2012.
A year later, she became a GEICO officer, with her election to assistant VP of Buffalo underwriting operations. She became assistant VP of claims in 2015 and held that position until she was promoted to VP of the Buffalo region.
Everest Insurance has appointed Chris Donlan to lead the Everest Insurance Marketing & Distribution efforts for the Southeast region. He will be based in the company’s Atlanta office.
Donlan, who joined Everest from AIG in 2016, had most recently been based in the company’s New York City office.
According to Dane Lopes, head of Sales, Marketing, and Distribution Management at Everest Insurance, Donlan will relocate to Atlanta to focus on strengthening the company’s trading relationships with insurance intermediaries and clients throughout the Southeast and expand its reach in this region.
Donlan has a background in property underwriting and more than 20 years of industry experience operating in both the wholesale and retail distribution channels.
Everest Insurance refers to the primary insurance operations of Everest Re Group, Ltd., and its affiliated companies which offer property, casualty and specialty lines insurance on both an admitted and non admitted basis in the U.S. and internationally.
J.M. Wilson has added Cassandra Silverman as assistant transportation underwriter to its North Charleston, S.C., office.
Silverman is responsible for quoting new and renewal business, corresponding with carrier underwriters, and assisting independent agents in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Silverman has previous experience as an underwriting intern for a specialty insurer.
J.M. Wilson is a managing general agency and surplus lines broker providing independent insurance agents access to specialty markets for both personal and commercial lines.