Ameritas CEO retires; CoverWhale chief AI officer: Career moves

June 16, 2023 1:04 PM

Commuters exit London Waterloo railway station after arriving in London, UK, on Monday, May 15, 2023. The upcoming batch of jobs data, due on Tuesday, May 16, is likely to show price pressures in the economy remain way too high for the Bank of England to tolerate. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg — Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg

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William W. Lester will retire as president and chief executive officer of Ameritas Mutual and Ameritas Life Insurance next year. The board selected Robert M. Jurgensmeier as the new CEO. Susan Wilkinson will be the new president and COO. "Ameritas has been my career, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunities I've had and the people I've come to know with this remarkable company," Lester said, in a statement.

Cover Whale announced Darien Acosta as its first chief artificial intelligence officer. Acosta will lead AI transformation within the organization and leverage automation and advanced algorithms to further its growth and scale across the business. Acosta was previously head of data analytics at the company.

Vantage Group announced that it has appointed Brian Steinhoff as senior vice president, property catastrophe, Vantage Risk. Steinhoff will lead the property catastrophe underwriting team with the company's partnership capital platform AdVantage Retro. The company raised $1 billion in capital for deployment through its partnership capital model in December 2022. Steinhoff previously held positions at Hamilton Insurance Group and Allied World.

Albert Zhou joins Corvus Insurance as its chief risk officer. Zhou was previously the chief actuarial and analytics officer at SynchronoSure, previously he founded Toyl Ventures and worked at Third Point Re and SiriusPoint. In the role, Zhou will implement best practices overseeing pricing, reserving, systemic risk modeling, risk accumulation and aggregation.

Attain Insurance has hired Linc Trimble as its chief underwriting officer. Trimble, who was working as a consultant for the company officially transitioned into the position at the beginning of June. Trimble served as the CEO of StarStone US after founding its U.S. Excess Casualty division and serving as Global Head of Casualty. His experience also includes launching Chubb's Bermuda-based Property & Casualty operations.