People Moves

CNA Appoints Townsend Senior Vice President, Claim

CNA appointed Joel Townsend senior vice president, Claim. He will report to David Perry, senior vice president, Specialty Claim.

Most recently, Townsend served as senior vice president and Worldwide Specialty Claims manager at Chubb where he was responsible for the management of high severity and high profile claims, development and execution of home office and field claim handling, reporting and authority protocols, and coordination with business partners on Specialty claim trend identification.

Prior to joining Chubb, Townsend was a partner at Ross, Dixon & Masback, LLP.

Driveway Appoints Simmons as New CEO

Mobile telematics company, Driveway Software, Inc., announced the appointment of Mike Simmons as chief executive officer. Driveway delivers a smartphone-deployed, cloud-based technology that helps drivers improve their driving skills and helps insurers reduce risk with better pricing data. The Silicon Valley-based company patented the first purely smartphone-based solution that achieved mobile data reliability, making usage based insurance (UBI) scalable and cost-effective for the first time. Simmons aims to accelerate the use of telematics by insurance companies to make roads safer.

Simmons succeeds company founder and CTO, Igor Katsman, who will stay with the company, focusing on its next generation of mobile telematics technology.

Simmons was previously with Automatic Labs, where he architected partnerships with five of the top ten insurers in the US, in addition to partnerships with OEMs and other leaders in the automotive industry. Prior to Automatic, he was president of Directed Electronics, where he developed the first iPhone app that could remotely start and unlock your car, and was a co-founder of Octo Telematics North America, where he helped launch the UBI market in the U.S. He also held a finance position at Ford Motor Company and was a co-founder of TechSpace.

Kerner Named Everest Re Executive Vice President, Head of Strategy and Risk Management

Everest Re Group, Ltd., a Bermuda holding company that operates through Everest Reinsurance Company provides reinsurance to property and casualty insurers in both the U.S. and international markets, named Michael G. Kerner executive vice president and head of Strategy and Risk Management.

Kerner, who will assume his new role on April 1, 2016, joins Everest from Zurich Insurance Group, where he most recently held the position of chief executive officer – General Insurance. He spent spent 24 years with Zurich, having served in various actuarial, reinsurance, underwriting and strategy roles, including CEO – Global Corporate in North America, global head of Group Reinsurance, General Insurance chief underwriting officer and group head of Strategy.

He is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries.

Great American Insurance Group Promotes Hays to VP and Chief Actuary

Great American Insurance Group is pleased to announce that Lisa A. Hays was promoted to vice president and chief actuary of Great American’s Property and Casualty Group, succeeding John Doellman, who will retire in May 2016.

Hays has over 25 years of industry experience in the areas of pricing, reserving, reinsurance, product management, strategic planning and predictive analytics.

Hays is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and holds the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation.