Six roles, each one closer to the policyholder's money

Mandate

Restore capital headroom for a growing annuity book, bring the privately priced part of the portfolio under valuation finance could defend, and implement LDTI without weakening controls.

Outcomes

• Raised $410m from a minority investor in 2022 while capping its mandate at about $5bn rather than the $12bn proposed.
• Met $2.3bn of surrenders in 2023–24 with $160m of realised losses and no breach of investment guidelines.
• Reduced office mortgage exposure from $1.7bn to $880m between January 2023 and December 2025.
• Reinsured the closed long-term care block in July 2025; the capital ratio rose from 400 to 415 per cent over the year.
• Adopted LDTI on 1 January 2023 with restated comparatives and no material weakness reported.

Decisions in context

I became chief financial officer in January 2020, after nearly four years as Wrenfield's treasurer, succeeding a CFO who retired after fourteen years in the role. Ten weeks later credit spreads widened sharply, and my first board meeting as CFO was an unscheduled discussion of liquidity. The mandate that followed had three parts: rebuild capital headroom for a book growing faster than retained earnings, bring privately priced assets under valuation that finance could defend, and implement LDTI without disturbing the controls I certify each quarter. The rise in interest rates from 2022 reordered the work. The minority investment, surrender planning and the office loan review came first; the care transaction followed once capital allowed it. I lead 240 people through seven direct reports and work as a peer of the chief investment officer and the chief actuary, all three of us reporting to the chief executive.

Reason for the move

Current role. Not seeking an executive move; considering one independent directorship with the Wrenfield board's consent.

Mandate

Turn a cash-management team into a treasury that could show the board the company's liquidity and capital under stress.

Outcomes

• Built the first liquidity stress test combining surrenders, hedge collateral calls and holding-company obligations.
• Refinanced $900m of holding-company debt in 2017, extending average maturity from six to thirteen years.
• Negotiated a 2018 funds-withheld agreement on $2.4bn of fixed annuity reserves, lifting the capital ratio by 28 points.
• Set a minimum of two years' interest and shareholder dividends for holding-company liquidity.

Decisions in context

Wrenfield hired me in April 2016 to turn a cash-management team into a treasury that could answer a board's questions about stress. The company had grown annuity sales steadily since its listing but measured liquidity largely as cash on hand. I built a stress test that combined surrender behaviour, collateral calls on our index option hedges and holding-company obligations, and presented it each quarter to the board's Finance and Investment Committee. In 2017 I refinanced $900 million of holding-company debt, extending its average maturity from six years to thirteen. In 2018 I negotiated the company's first funds-withheld reinsurance agreement, ceding a share of $2.4 billion of fixed annuity reserves while the assets stayed on our balance sheet. By the time I became CFO I had worked with every capital lever the company had, and knew what each one cost.

Reason for the move

Promoted to chief financial officer on my predecessor's retirement.

Mandate

Match the assets behind reinsured annuity and universal life blocks to their liabilities, and price the investment side of new asset-intensive transactions.

Outcomes

• Reworked cash-flow matching for 23 reinsured blocks, narrowing the portfolio's duration gap from 1.8 years to 0.4.
• Priced the investment assumptions for nine asset-intensive transactions, four of which closed.
• Redesigned collateral trust reporting for clients, cutting disputed valuations from 14 a year to three.

Decisions in context

Kerrowan's US subsidiary reinsured annuity and universal life business for American insurers, and I joined it in March 2011 to run asset-liability management. The assets supporting our reinsured blocks had been bought deal by deal, and the portfolio's duration had drifted 1.8 years away from the liabilities. With a team of eleven I rebuilt cash-flow matching block by block and brought the gap to 0.4 years. I also priced the investment assumptions for nine asset-intensive transactions, and four closed. Clients' collateral trusts were a constant source of friction, so I redesigned how we reported them, and disputed valuations fell from fourteen a year to three. The role showed me reinsurance from the side that holds the assets, which shapes how I read every reinsurance proposal at Wrenfield. I left to run treasury and capital at a company that wrote its own policies.

Reason for the move

Wanted to run treasury and capital at a direct writer, closer to policyholders and distribution.

Mandate

Run private placement origination and the structured credit book; from late 2008, lead the workout of impaired holdings.

Outcomes

• Led the workout of 14 troubled private placements between 2008 and 2010, recovering an average of 78 per cent of par against market bids near 45.
• Reduced structured holdings rated below single-A from 19 per cent of the book to 7 per cent by 2010.
• Introduced recovery-based concentration limits for private placements, adopted by the investment committee in 2009.

Decisions in context

In June 2005 I took charge of Brackwell's private placement team and added its structured credit holdings, reporting to the chief investment officer with fourteen people and $8.3 billion of assets in my care. For three years the work was origination: negotiating loans to mid-sized companies and setting covenants we expected to rely on. From late 2008 it became recovery. I led the workout of fourteen troubled private placements, recovering on average 78 per cent of par when the market was bidding around 45, and cut the structured book's exposure below single-A from 19 per cent to 7 per cent. The experience convinced me that a rating and a recovery are different numbers, and in 2009 the investment committee adopted my proposal to set concentration limits on expected recovery rather than rating alone. I left because I wanted to understand the liabilities those assets were meant to serve.

Reason for the move

Wanted to learn the liability side of the balance sheet, which a reinsurer's asset-liability role offered.

Mandate

Analyse mid-sized US borrowers and negotiate the terms of private placement loans for the general account.

Outcomes

• Analysed and helped negotiate 41 private placements totalling $1.1bn.
• Wrote the team's first covenant-monitoring checklist, applied to the whole portfolio from 2003.
• Completed an evening MBA while working full time, graduating in 2005.

Decisions in context

I joined Brackwell's private placement team in July 2001 as an investment analyst, moving from audit because I wanted to sit where investment decisions were made. The team lent to mid-sized American companies that preferred a negotiated loan to a public bond, and my work was credit analysis and covenant negotiation on between $150 million and $300 million of new loans a year. Over four years I worked on 41 transactions totalling $1.1 billion. Remembering the trucking company from my audit days, I wrote the team's first covenant-monitoring checklist, which from 2003 applied to every loan in the portfolio. I studied for an MBA in the evenings at the Selwick Graduate School of Business and graduated in May 2005. The investment committee's habit of asking what each loan would recover in a default became my own habit, and it has never left me.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead the private placement team, with structured credit added.

Mandate

Plan and perform audit fieldwork on the statutory and GAAP accounts of Midwestern insurers.

Outcomes

• Led investment-schedule testing on seven insurer audits a year by 2000.
• Licensed as a certified public accountant in 1999.
• Added a covenant-compliance check for privately placed bonds to the practice's insurer audit programme.

Decisions in context

I joined Pellam & Strode's Chicago insurance practice in August 1997, three months after graduating, and became an audit senior in 1999, the year I was licensed as a certified public accountant. The practice audited mid-sized life and property insurers across the Midwest, and I learned statutory accounting from the schedules up: investment schedules, the asset valuation reserve, the reconciliation between statutory and GAAP results. By 2000 I led investment testing on seven audits a year. The trucking-company placement I found in 1999, carried at par after two covenant breaches, changed the firm's audit programme: we added a covenant-compliance check for every privately placed bond. It also changed my plans. I wanted to be in the room where the loan was made, not the one where it was tested a year later, and I left for an investment role in 2001.

Reason for the move

Wanted to work where investment decisions were made rather than test them afterwards.