The New York State Insurance Department has announced a number of senior appointments.
Newly promoted officials with duties focusing on life and health insurance or private-sector life and health experience include Kermitt Brooks, the first deputy superintendent of the department; Susan Donnellan, deputy superintendent for policy and chief ethics officer; and Troy Oechsner, deputy superintendent for health.
Brooks, who oversees the department's Life Insurance Bureau, previously was deputy attorney general for operations. He also has been a counsel in the law department at MetLife Inc., New York.
Donnellan has been general counsel and deputy superintendent at the New York department since May 2006. Before she joined the department, she was associate general counsel of the Life Insurance Council of New York, Albany, N.Y.
Oechsner has been deputy bureau chief in the New York department's Health Care Bureau since 2000.
In other personnel news:
- The board of Union Central Life Insurance Company, Cincinnati, a unit of UNIFI Mutual Holding Company, Lincoln, Neb., has elected Gary Huffman president and chief executive officer.
Huffman previously was the company's president and chief operating officer.
Huffman has assumed the CEO title from John Jacobs, who has been and will continue to be Union Central's chairman.
Huffman has a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Kentucky. He is chairman of LIMRA International, Windsor, Conn.
- National Financial Partners Corp., New York, has hired James Gelder to be chief executive officer of its insurance services subsidiary and executive president of the parent company.
Gelder previously was head of the life insurance business distribution organization for ING U.S. Financial Services, a U.S. unit of ING Groep N.V., Amsterdam.
Gelder, who will be based in Austin, Texas, attended Southern California College and holds the Chartered Life Underwriter professional designation.
Gelder served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Southeast Asia from 1970 through 1971.
- RiverSource Investments L.L.C., a subsidiary of Ameriprise Financial Inc., Minneapolis, has hired Erik Knutzen to fill the newly created post of vice president and director of institutional strategies.
