What’s New: In Brief (May 30, 2006)

After 34 years in the insurance industry, Peter Parkin, the chief operating officer of Sovereign General Insurance Company’s Calgary operations, has announced his intention to retire as of February 28, 2007.
Parkin has served at Sovereign for the past 13 years of his career, five of them as the company’s chief operating officer. Parkin said the company’s transition over to a new COO would likely begin “later this year.”
“It’s a tough decision to make when one decides to retire and it’s a very personal decision as to when that should be,” Parkin wrote in a May 26, 2006 letter to Sovereign staff. “I believe I am retiring for the right personal reasons and at the right time for both myself and the company.
“Over the course of my career I have been with five different insurers, and lived in four different cities. I have been fortunate to have achieved almost every goal I wanted to achieve, so I leave the industry with a very good feeling about what I have given to it and what has been given back. One of my goals was to retire early, so that’s the last one to knock off my list.”
Parkin praised the operations of The Co-operators, of which Sovereign is a member.
Prior to 1994, Parkin served as vice-president of marketing and underwriting at Chateau Insurance Management Inc., and branch manager at Laurentian Casualty Company of Canada from 1987 to 1989.
Parkin held various positions at Crum and Forster of Canada Ltd. from 1976 to 1987, including vice president of underwriting. He was also a marketing representative and inspector, commercial lines underwriter and inspector trainee at Norwich Union Insurance Group from 1973 to 1976.

ACE Limited (NYSE: ACE) has appointed Brian Dowd, chair and CEO of ACE USA, as CEO of the company’s InsuranceNorth American operating division.
The company also announced the promotion of John Lupica, president and chief operating officer of ACE USA, to be ACE USA’s CEO.
The InsuranceNorth American division includes:
the operations of ACE USA, the company’s retail brokerage business serving the United States and Canada;
ACE Westchester Specialty, ACE’s excess and surplus lines business in the United States, operating primarily through wholesale distributors; and
ACE Bermuda, the original insurance company of the ACE Group of Companies, established in 1985, that writes high-limit excess liability and directors and officers insurance worldwide. The division generated US$5.5 billion in net premiums written in 2005.
Evan Greenberg, ACE Limited’s president and CEO, said: “I am pleased to announce the appointment of Brian Dowd to lead our North American division, the largest operating unit in our company. In his 11 years with ACE, Brian has held a number of senior management assignments with increasing responsibility and has demonstrated outstanding leadership with all of them.
“Brian has run multiple businesses in Bermuda and the United States, both retail and wholesale, and he has proven his command of complex, multi-line underwriting operations. He is a great leader and business partner. I have every confidence in his ability to lead this organization into the future.