Symetra Financial Corp. has picked Margaret Meister, an actuary, to succeed Tom Marra as the company's president and chief executive officer.
Meister will get those titles in February, the company announced Thursday. Marra is Symetra's chairman as well as its president and CEO, and he will continue to be the company's chairman, Symetra said.
Symetra started out as the life insurance arm of Safeco Corp., a Seattle-based property-casualty insurer. Safeco sold the Bellevue, Washington-based insurer to investors in 2004. The investor group sold a large share of Symetra's stock to the public in January 2010, during some of the worst days of the Great Recession.
Symetra generated about $3.7 billion in annuity considerations in 2016 and ranked 22nd in terms of annuity considerations, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' market share report.
Meister has a bachelor's degree in math from Whitman College. She began working at Safeco as an actuary in 1988. She became Symetra's chief financial officer in 2006.
She is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. She serves on the board of LIMRA.
