Several insurance organizations announced leadership changes this week, spanning brokerage business development, MGA strategy, board governance and finance leadership.
Willis, a WTW business, has appointed Paul Haas (pictured, left) as senior director of business development, based in Chicago, where he will lead new business development across the Midwest with a focus on financial institutions risk at the intersection of banking and digital assets.
Haas joined Willis on August 10 after 15 years in the industry, most recently as vice president at Marsh McLennan advising banking and finance clients, and previously at Lockton working on complex financial institutions exposures including digital assets.
Ryan Pischke, Willis's managing director and regional growth leader for the Midwest, tied the hire directly to how quickly that market is evolving.
"We're excited to welcome Paul to Willis at a time when financial institutions are navigating significant change, particularly as banking and digital assets continue to converge," Pischke said.
Financial institutions risk sitting at the banking and digital assets intersection is a genuinely underdeveloped specialty, most large brokerages still treat crypto and digital asset custody risk as an emerging line rather than a core financial institutions offering.
Haas's background across two major competing brokerages before joining Willis suggests this remains a talent pool small enough that specific individuals, rather than institutional playbooks, are driving how quickly carriers and brokers build capability here.
Ames & Gough has promoted Tracy Benson, Christine Gibboni (pictured, center) and Baynard Stanchina (pictured, right) to assistant vice president in its Washington, DC office, all specializing in risk management and insurance for the firm's design professional clients.
Benson joined in 2014 after a decade at USI and holds the CIC, CISR and CLCS designations; Gibboni joined in 2015 with 16 years of industry experience serving Midwest design firm clients; and Stanchina joined in 2024 after serving as a lead underwriter for design firm professional liability coverage, holding the RPLU designation.
Tom Marchetti, the firm's president overseeing DC operations, credited all three with consistently delivering results for clients in an increasingly complex risk environment.
This is the second Ames & Gough promotion round covered in recent weeks, suggesting the firm is moving through a broader, multi-office round of internal advancement for its design firm specialists rather than a one-off recognition.
Acturion Group has appointed Tamara Kravec as chief financial officer and chief operating officer, overseeing finance, treasury, risk and operations across the platform.
Kravec joins from M Financial Group, where she served as chief financial and risk officer, and previously held senior finance roles at American Equity Investment Life and Nationwide, along with equity research positions covering life insurance at Banc of America Securities, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston. Stephan Muecke, Acturion's CEO, said her combination of operating and investor-side experience was distinctive and well suited to the company's growth phase.
Acturion positions itself as an insurance and retirement solutions platform spanning insurance, reinsurance, asset management and annuities; a CFO/COO with reinsurance operating experience specifically (from her time overseeing M Financial Re) suggests the company may be building toward more structured reinsurance capacity arrangements, relevant context for brokers and MGAs placing life and annuity business through Acturion-affiliated carriers.
Arbella Insurance Group has appointed Martina Conlon and Bob Bizak to its board of directors. Conlon spent more than 30 years in insurance technology, most recently leading the insurance practice at Datos Insights, and previously worked at Arbella itself as director of enterprise technology from 2004 to 2009.
Bizak spent 18 years as a partner at Rogers & Gray Insurance before joining Arbella in 2019, where he built extensive relationships with the company's independent agent network.
John Donohue, Arbella's board chairman, said Conlon's expertise would help guide the company's digital transformation while Bizak would keep the agent perspective central to board decisions.
For Arbella's independent agency partners specifically, Bizak's board seat is a direct, structural channel for agent concerns to reach board-level decisions, a distinction chief executives don't always build in explicitly. Combined with Conlon's technology mandate, the two appointments suggest Arbella is deliberately pairing its digital investment decisions with agent-network input rather than treating them as separate tracks.
FutureProof Technologies, an AI-native property insurance MGA, has named Jonathan Mertz chief business officer, where he will lead business development, partnerships and go-to-market strategy as the company works to launch its own full-stack property insurance carrier.
Mertz joins from Slide Insurance, where as senior vice president of operations he helped scale the company from inception to more than $1 billion in premium revenue in three years and supported its June 2025 IPO, which achieved a valuation exceeding $2 billion on the Nasdaq under the ticker SLDE.
Alisa Valderrama, FutureProof's co-CEO, said Mertz's experience building platforms from the ground up through a public market debut was rare.
"We have spent the past few years proving out our AI-enabled pricing technology in wildfire and hurricane-exposed markets. Next, we will be standing up our own carrier, which builds on our existing pricing, underwriting and portfolio management technology to include policy administration, distribution, and claims," Valderrama said.
This hire signals FutureProof's ambitions have moved well beyond its current MGA and agency model. Slide itself grew rapidly by taking over Citizens policies and acquiring blocks of business exiting carriers in catastrophe-exposed Florida and South Carolina markets.
Mertz's specific experience scaling claims and contact center operations during that growth suggests FutureProof may be preparing to pursue a similar rapid-scale strategy in wildfire and hurricane-exposed markets once its own carrier launches, relevant for wholesale brokers and agents currently placing business through FutureProof's existing MGA who may see the company's role in their placements shift from MGA partner to direct carrier.
