Central to the definition of "legend" is the notion that the fame achieved will be enduring—that these are people whose accomplishments will be remembered for a long, long time.

The figures selected as the industry's Top 25 Living Legends easily meet that criteria—their contributions to P&C insurance have been epic, monumental—and are sure to be discussed and studied for decades to come. Each profiled visionary has fundamentally changed the way insurance is done, likely forever.

#25 Warren Buffett: Insurance Investor

While his business-world celebrity stems from his investing prowess, not his insurance expertise, it's impossible to leave the Oracle of Omaha off our list of Living Legends.

Insurance companies are a key component of the Berkshire Hathaway empire, and if nothing else, Warren Buffett can take credit for making carriers an appealing class of stock to own, as people look to imitate his magic.

Year-end underwriting profit from Berkshire Hathaway's primary insurance operations totaled $248 million in 2011.

Legend has it that Buffett's interest in insurance began during the 1950s. One fateful day, Buffett, then a young man in his 20s, struck up a friendship with Benjamin Graham, a prominent shareholder and future chairman of GEICO, during the course of a lengthy discussion on insurance.

Berkshire Hathaway acquired GEICO, the third-largest private-passenger auto insurer in the United States, and its subsidiaries in 1996.

The acquisition of General Re, one of the largest reinsurers in the world based on net written and capital premiums, followed in 1998.

Berkshire Hathaway's other subsidiaries underwriting P&C insurance, or the "Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies," lists National Indemnity Co., Medical Protective Co., Applied Underwriters, U.S. Liability Insurance Co., Central States Indemnity Co., and Kansas Bankers Surety, among others.

"If the insurance industry should experience a $250 billion loss from some mega-catastrophe—a loss about triple anything it has ever faced—Berkshire as a whole would likely record a moderate profit for the year because of its many streams of earnings," read a 2011 statement from the company. "Concurrently, all other major insurers and reinsurers would be far in the red, and some would face insolvency."

—Anya Khalamayzer

#24 J. Robert Hunter: Gadfly-in-Chief

J. Robert Hunter doesn't shy away from a fight. After serving both the private sector and the federal government, he now raises many issues—and eyebrows—as a consumer advocate as director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America.

Former U.S. Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) calls Hunter a "provocateur extraordinaire," and this portrayal can be credited to Hunter's willingness to raise tough questions to a tough crowd.

"Sometimes I'm in a big meeting with insurance executives, and they all groan…but I learned to think of that as applause," Hunter tells PC360. "I ask a tough question they don't like, so they must be afraid of it."

The industry has denied most of his criticisms. The Insurance Information Institute and its president, Robert Hartwig, have disputed the methods Hunter and the Consumer Federation of America used to gather data in one report and have accused another report of "manufacturing a phantom problem." The Heartland Institute has even declared one report as "dead wrong."

Hunter has held various positions in the industry, helping to lend some credence to his claims. Spanning 50 years, he has served Atlantic Mutual, Centennial, ISO and AIPSO. He has worked in regulation in the Federal Insurance Administration under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. As part of these positions, he oversaw the National Flood Insurance Program. In 1993 he was named Texas Commissioner of Insurance.

His awareness of consumer issues occurred while serving as chief actuary for the Federal Insurance Administration in 1971. Depositing his first paycheck, he realized he was paid by American citizens and resolved to think about regulation from the citizens' point of view. His resolve was strengthened after becoming a Christian in 1978.

"I thought about how the poor are impacted by a lot of things like not being able to afford auto insurance and how they are gypped on claims," says Hunter. "I thought God had prepared me with my actuarial experience for what he was calling me into."

Together with Ralph Nader, in the 1980s he formed the National Insurance Consumer Organization, where he served as president.

Hunter has chastised insurers and regulators on NFIP ("the rates are not adequate to cover the risks"); medical malpractice ("there is an explosion in premiums charged by mismanaged insurers"); transparency ("they try very hard to keep people confused"); and forced place insurance ("insurance companies and banks are in a deal"), among many other issues.

—Melissa Hillebrand

#23 Jay Fishman: Traveler Man

In a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., in 2010, Jay Fishman became choked up as he told of how his maternal grandmother was sent to the United States from Russia because she knew how to sew and could get a job. Working as a seamstress, she sent money home so the family could emigrate to the U.S.

Years later, his newly emigrated father opened a small printing business that was able to pay the bills and put food on the table.

Speaking to PC360, he laments that these days, it's doubtful someone could do the same for their family with the burden of government regulation weighing so heavily against success.

For the chairman and CEO of Travelers, bringing attention to the failure of government to resolve the most pressing issues of our time—the federal deficit—has turned into a crusade. "I feel a personal obligation to be engaged," Fishman says.

But if Fishman continues to champion those who seek the American Dream of success through hard, honest work, his own accomplishments serve as a prime example of how one person can have a notable impact on his chosen field.

Over the course of his career, Fishman managed to perform two huge tasks: he rescued an ailing Minnesota-based insurance company, and combined two legendary brands into one major insurer.

Fishman became an executive at Primerica in 1989 and served with the company through its acquisition by Citigroup. There, he held several key positions from 1998 to 2001, including chairman, CEO and president of Travelers insurance (which Citigroup owned).

He left Citigroup–and a chance at succeeding his boss, Sandy Weill, as CEO–in 2001 to take over the troubled St. Paul Cos. There, he jettisoned unprofitable lines of business and put it on the path toward profitability.

By 2004, after commisserating with former colleague Robert Lipp (who had become Travelers' CEO), over a possible powerhouse merger, Fishman engineered the acquisition of Travelers to form a Top 5 insurance company.

Fishman is known for his frankness and transparency in seeking a profit. While setting his sights high, he deals in realistic expectations; he's gone before shareholders and warned them about profit results that, while perfectly respectable, weren't the type that resulted from reckless practices. And he refused any bailout from the government, thank you very much.

"We focus on the long term here," he told Forbes in 2011. "That is how we do things."

Fishman believes one of the major responsibilities of a company is developing the next generation of leaders, a mission he has said the company takes very seriously. When he knew he was being considered for the top job at Citi, Fishman acknowledged his own limitations, and opted to take on the challenge in St. Paul.

"I had next to no experience in sales and trading, limited experience in investment banking and no experience in commercial banking," he told Forbes. "I wouldn't have been an effective CEO."

Fishman has put the weight of Travelers behind the message that the magnitude of the federal deficit needs to be solved. The company's Travelers Institute produced a documentary titled "Overdraft" where economic, political and business leaders discuss the issue, including Fishman.

"Time is not our ally," Fishman said during his 2010 speech in D.C. "The longer we wait, the more painful the resolution will be. If the question is asked, whose ox is going to be gored, the answer is everyone's, because the problem is so comprehensive and so large that it is impossible for small groups to solve this problem."

—Mark E. Ruquet

#22 Dr. William T. Hold: Accredit to the Industry

Chances are if your career is in insurance, you have some form of accreditation. The odds are also good that you have Dr. William T. Hold to thank for the initials after your name.

Hold has been on a four-decade crusade to raise professional standards across the insurance industry.

In 1969, the Certified Insurance Counselors (CIC) designation program was developed as the initial offering of The National Alliance for Insurance Education and Research, which Hold co-founded.

The educational landscape for the insurance industry was bleak in those days, Hold recalls. The National Alliance was formed to create a standard in education in every field and state.

Today, under Hold's leadership continuing leadership as president, The Alliance offers more than 2,500 programs and attracts more than 146,000 participants each year across the nation including Puerto Rico and Mexico. In addition to the CIC Program, The National Alliance offers the Certified Insurance Service Representative (CISR), Certified Risk Manager (CRM) and Certified School Risk Manager (CSRM) designation programs, as well as a variety of specialty courses serving industry professionals at every level and in every job description.

"We've come a long way in 43 years and we're the leading program in the country," Hold tells PC360, noting that these accreditations are an educational standard that are relied upon throughout the industry. "It's commonplace for companies or agencies to require you to become a CIC to move ahead," he says.

"We've had people who have been certified for years and have put their faith in us and credit their success in their career to us. I think that's the greatest accomplishment," he adds.

In March of this year, Hold was inducted into the Florida State University College of Business 2012 Hall of Fame.

"Individuals who earn these professional designations take significant pride in their accomplishments," colleague Bruce McCreadie, a 1977 College of Business graduate, said in his nomination letter. "The impact Bill Hold has had on the insurance industry over the past 40 years cannot be overstated." McCreadie pointed to the "thousands of people who have had a richer and more successful career due in part to the educational and professional development opportunities that Bill and his organization provided."

—Caterina Pontoriero

#21 Robert Hartwig: Omnipresent Guru

You might think Robert Hartwig is omnipresent. When he's not on TV giving the insurance perspective on a wide range of issues or being quoted in various national publications, Hartwig is traveling across the globe giving presentations on the industry.

"I make about 100 presentations a year," says the president of the Insurance Information Institute. "It's very common for me to be in two or three different cities every week—and they're not near each other."

But despite always being in such high demand, Hartwig has developed a reputation for himself and the I.I.I. for being a credible source of information in the insurance world.

"If you were to ask me which of the countless websites available to keep in touch with our industry today, I'd say the best is I.I.I.," says Hank Watkins, president of Lloyd's America. "Bob is very good at what he does. He's a true spokesperson for the industry."

Chuck Chamness, president and CEO of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, agrees. "Everyone in the industry knows when it comes to perspective on an issue, statistics on the industry or a quote on a development in insurance, Bob's the go-to guy," says Chamness.

Hartwig is also a regular source of wisdom for PC360: A quick search for his name returns 44 articles.

—Caterina Pontoriero

#20 Therese (Terri) Vaughan: States' Rights

At a time of much talk about increasing federal oversight of the insurance industry, the state regulatory bodies have been fortunate to have a strong voice arguing that the 50 states—backed by nationally endorsed best practices—are doing the job just fine on their own.

That unifying voice belongs to Terri Vaughan, chief executive officer of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, standard-setting and regulatory support organization created and governed by the chief insurance regulators from the 50 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories.

Vaughan, who assumed the leadership role in 2009, is the NAIC's chief spokesperson before Congress, regulators and lobbyists—and her credentials for this key role are impeccable.

She holds the record as the longest-serving insurance commissioner in Iowa, a post she held from 1999-2004, under both Republican and Democratic governors. She also served as the president of the NAIC in 2002.

Her career began in academia as the Robb B. Kelley Distinguished Professor of Insurance and Actuarial Science at Drake University; she earned a Ph.D. in risk and insurance at the University of Pennsylvania.

Vaughan strongly supports limiting federal regulation of the state's regulatory authority. When addressing the implementation of the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act of 1999, she wrote on behalf of the NAIC that "insurance markets have developed from state to state reflecting the differences in population, geography, weather patterns and delivery systems. State regulation has addressed that marketplace efficiently and effectively."

Vaughan expressed to PC360 that her stance has only become more entrenched since then. "Over many years I have come to the strong belief that although the state regulatory system is not perfect, its strength and flexibility are advantages that outweigh the disadvantages," she says. "I saw the offer to be the chief executive officer of the NAIC as an opportunity to continue to build on those strengths."

"The NAIC's standard-insurance accreditation structure, locally implemented peer-review processes, incentives to do a good job and flexibility at the state level are the recipe for an effective system," she says, noting that states also have the advantage of being able to communicate with consumers on a more grassroots level than Washing regulators ever could.

Vaughn also chairs the NAIC terrorism risk-implementation working group, where she helped Congress and the Treasury pass and implement the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA). She explained its importance to the casualty insurance market:

"After the huge losses resulting from the collapse of the World Trade Center, reinsurance companies began to state that they couldn't reinsure terrorism risks as they were historically defined," she said. "In fall 2001, policies started renewing with no terrorism coverage, and in consequence, people felt uncomfortable investing in real estate or construction projects.

"The Treasury and the NAIC worked together with Congress to get a federal law passed that would stop the insurance industry losses because in case of another event, there would be an opportunity to get funding from the federal government," she explains.

Vaughan's expertise has gone international as chair of the Joint Forum (previously known as The Joint Forum on Financial Conglomerates), which focuses on cross-sector (and cross-border) supervisory issues related to the banking, securities and insurance sectors.

She says the forum's greatest forward-looking goals are working out principals for the supervision of financial conglomerates, monitoring how risks arising from increased human longevity are being shifted to financial markets, point-of-sale disclosure on mutual funds, cross-sector comparison between preconditions for effective supervisory laws, and the supervision of mortgage insurance.

—Anya Khalamayzer

#19 Ajit Jain: Reinsurance Royalty

Invoking the phrase "one of a kind" to describe someone in the reinsurance business may seem like hyperbole, but when you consider the career of Ajit Jain, the head of Berkshire Hathaway's reinsurance division, the term doesn't sound nearly as outrageous. In fact, at least one top executive in the reinsurance business feels it is wholly appropriate.

"Matching an underwriter's best instincts, a strong analytical mind, and paired with robust capital, Ajit Jain may be unique—and uniquely successful—in the annals of insurance," says Franklin Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America.

Through Jain's work at Berkshire Hathaway the reinsurance division has earned the company billions, according to no less an authority than Chairman Warren Buffett. Jain is so important to the company that he is considered one of the top candidates to take its helm, should the 81-year-old Buffett ever retire.

In fact, Buffett once told investors if he and Jain were both in a sinking boat, the investors should save Jain not him. (And no less an authority than the Wall Street Journal has dubbed him a "rock star".)

Jain, 60, remains accessible to those with whom he does business, but is not so to the media. Through a representative, he declined to speak for this story, per his MO.

Born and raised in India, Jain and came to the U.S. to work for IBM before earning his graduate degree from Harvard. He joined Berkshire Hathaway in 1986 and took what was a small reinsurance group and cultivated it into a key piece of the Berkshire Hathaway empire.

Andrew Barile, a reinsurance consultant, remembers Jain's early days in the industry.

"When Jain first started , he would go to the NAII conventions (now the PCI) and he'd be up at 6 in the morning to wander around the lobby talking to people, shaking hands and asking, 'Do you have any opportunities?"' says Barile.

Jain's transparency, says Barile, was refreshing for an insurance executive: "His style was fantastic because people in the industry weren't accustomed to the top people getting into the details of a deal.

"You can pick up the phone and talk directly to Ajit about a business deal," Barile continues. "He has a great ability to remember a particular [transaction]. He wouldn't forget that you had given him an opportunity, and it didn't work out, but he never let on that he was upset about a deal."

Most reinsurance companies start with certain amounts of capital and as they grow the business they add to the surplus, adds Barile—but Berkshire Hathaway's style was totally different. "The other companies didn't have someone like Jain who was open to looking at every opportunity," he says.

—Robert Regis Hyle

#18 Alan Jay Kaufman: Growing Family

Many sons and daughters assume the mantle of the family business when a parent retires—but few reinvent the business as aggressively as Alan Jay Kaufman.

As chairman, president and CEO of H.W. Kaufman Financial Group, headquartered in Farmington Hills, Mich., Kaufman oversees a third-generation insurance brokerage founded in 1969 by his late father, Herbert W. Kaufman.

That business today includes Burns & Wilcox, the firm's biggest subsidiary, which generates nearly $900 million in annual premium, making it the largest independent wholesale broker and underwriting manager in the country.

As someone who grew up in his father's insurance brokerage, Kaufman knows insurance inside and out. But he credits his legal education (he counts his graduation from the University of Notre Dame Law School and subsequent legal practice among his most satisfying career achievements) as the grounding necessary to reinvent the business for the 21^st century.

"My father left his mark and did a great job of expanding the company," Kaufman says. "I recognized that I could further expand the company even more, and I did," he says, noting that strategic acquisitions have expanded the firm's specialties and geographic reach. The firm now has 38 offices in 24 states and in Europe and Canada

After successfully practicing law and launching his own law firm, Kaufman joined the family business in 1996. One of his first tasks was to bring publicly held Burns & Wilcox back into private ownership, bankrolling the effort with his own capital and becoming the firm's sole owner. "It was a gutsy move on my part from a business perspective," he said. "I bet the ranch. I was committed over 100 percent to the company."

Kaufman also expanded his late father's philanthropic legacy. In 2001, he founded the Kaufman Family Foundation and the Herbert W. Kaufman Memorial Scholarship through the National Assn. of Professional Surplus Lines Offices (NAPSLO).

Former NAPSLO Executive Director Richard Bouhan praises Kaufman's "keen understanding of the legislative process" and his assistance in leading the NAPSLO legislative committee in shaping policy positions and presentations to Congress and state legislatures.

Asked about the industry's biggest challenges, Kaufman points to a talent shortage. "Our profession is not to the level it should be," he says. "We have to hire the very best in our business; we shouldn't be hiring average. It's a challenge to change that mentality."

Kaufman sees opportunity in international growth. "We have to be able to place risk on an international basis," he says. "Today, even medium-sized companies have multinational risks, whether it's Property, Professional Liability, Manufacturing or Shipping.

—Laura M. Toops

#17 Joseph Plumeri: Will(is) to Lead

An apt metaphor for the towering ambitions—and sky-high talents—of Joseph J. Plumeri is that the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, formerly known as the Sears Tower, now bears the name of the company of which he is chairman and CEO: Willis, the world's third-largest brokerage, with 17,000 employees in 120 countries.

Plumeri, raised in a blue-collar neighborhood of Trenton, took charge of Willis in 2000, walking into a staid, blue-blooded British institution that was nearly 200 years old—and had just lost more than $100 million the year prior.

He immediately set about shaking up the corporate culture, and the changes he has brought about have been both enormous and enormously successful.

He took the company public in 2001, and he saw the company's net worth double over his first eight years. In 2008, the firm acquired one of the top ten insurance brokerage firms Hilb, Rogal & Hobbs in a $2.1 billion deal, firmly establishing its presence in the United States.

Plumeri recalls for PC360 what his first days were like when he arrived at Willis, walking into a firm crying for leadership.

"From day one when I got here I think there was thirst for a vision that did not exist," says Plumeri, who described the staff as "beaten down and told it wasn't very good." He gave the staff motivation.

"That's what I did; I simply told them something that they wanted to feel," says Plumeri.

"The first thing you learn about leadership is that it is not about you," adds Plumeri, who is famous for his open-door policy (going so far as to remove the door from his own office).

"Leadership is just the opposite of what people believe," he adds. "If you are a real leader, you appreciate the fact that the people you have the good fortune to inspire and the people you have the good fortune to motivate are the people who give you the opportunity to work with them, and it's these same people who make the success of the company, not you."

Plumeri is also renowned for his direct and frank pronouncements. Sometimes these are funny: At the renaming ceremony for the Willis Tower, Plumeri reportedly said ""You can call it anything you want… you can call it the 'Big Willie' for all I care. As a matter of fact, I wish you would."

But on a more serious note, he also has earned the ire of some in the industry by calling for contract certainty and criticizing contingent commissions—even before former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer entered the picture.

Although earlier this year, Willis announced it would accept contingent commissions (on employee-benefits business only), causing some to use the "h" word—hypocrite.

Plumeri says contingents remain because clients don't care about them.

While regulators demand contract certainty within 30 days in London, it does not in the United States.

On the general issue of brokerage-industry transparency, "we did move the ball a little bit," he says.

—Mark E. Ruquet

#16 Robert Rusbuldt: Our Man in Washington

For more than 20 years, Robert Rusbuldt, president and CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA or the "Big I"), has represented the interests of insurance agents on Capitol Hill, helping lawmakers understand the industry, especially the vital role played by independent agents and brokers.

He has been recognized by The Washington Post, The Hill and Roll Call as one of the top lobbyists in Washington, and he appears regularly on CNN, CNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg, offering his analysis on political, legislative, policy and business issues.

"The IIABA, through Bob's leadership, has become the most highly regarded and influential voice of the insurance industry in Washington," says Gregory E. Murphy, chairman, president and CEO of Selective Insurance Co. of America.

Rusbuldt's visibility, knowledge and involvement have enhanced both the reputation and influence of insurance agents—in Congress and with the NAIC, NCOIL and other state-based organizations. He's most proud of "watershed" legislation in which he and the IIABA helped promote the interests of agencies, most recently the Dodd-Frank law, which included many protections for independent agencies (and excluded agents from many of its provisions).

"Early in Bob's tenure as head of the Big I, the independent agent was under fierce attack as being irrelevant in the marketplace," says Tom Van Berkel, chairman and CEO of The Main Street America Group. "As a result of Bob's incredible advocacy efforts and leadership over the past 11 years, the independent agency system has flourished."

Under his steerage, IIABA launched several key initiatives, among them: the Consumer Agency Portal; InsurBanc; the Trusted Choice brand; the Big I Reinsurance Co. (BIRC); Virtual University; and the Agents Council for Technology. He also grew Big I's InsurPac to a $1 million per year political action committee.

One of the biggest challenges facing the industry today, Rusbuldt says, is the need to meet consumer demands for a more seamless, automated insurance experience. "The insurance industry has lagged behind other industries in deploying technology internally for more efficiency and externally for an enhanced consumer experience," he says. "Insurance consumers are demanding quicker, more efficient and more effective ways of doing business. This is creating challenges for both insurance carriers and agents/brokers to accommodate."

Rusbuldt also hopes the industry can improve how it attracts and retains talent through IIABA's Project InVEST and the Diversity Task Force. "As our carrier and distribution force ages, it is vital that the next generation of leaders step up and take our industry to the next level of success," he says. "I am very optimistic that working with other industry stakeholders, these programs will make meaningful progress in meeting our challenges."

In terms of relationships between agents and insurance companies, Rusbuldt says: "I have always been committed to working with independent-agency [carriers] as true partners," he says. "Companies acting alone cannot make the fundamental investments or address the essential needs of the independent agency system. Together we can help move the [independent-agency] channel to new and incredible heights of success that benefits both Big I members and carriers."

—Laura M. Toops

#15 Thomas J. Wilson: Allstate Athlete

In its 81 years of existence The Allstate Corp. has a storied history for innovation—and controversy—since its founding by Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 1931.

It was in 1995, the year the insurer spun off from Sears, that Thomas J. Wilson joined Allstate as its chief financial officer, moving from Sears, where he had been vice president of strategy and analysis.

In 1999, Allstate, which was known for selling insurance through its direct agents, acquired CNA Personal Insurance, renaming it Encompass, opening its independent agent channel.

At that time, Wilson was chairman and president of Allstate Financial, its life, retirement and investment products division.

Wilson was named president and CEO of Allstate in 2007 and succeeded Edward Liddy as chairman in 2008.

With touch points already established through direct agent and independent agent channels, Wilson sought in 2011 to complete the avenues of sales opportunity with the acquisition of the direct-to-consumer, online insurer Esurance, and its sister company, the insurance agency Answer Financial. Purchased from White Mountains Insurance Group, Allstate paid the insurer $1 billion.

When asked about his leadership philosophy, Wilson says in an e-mail to PC360 that "People are the key to all success. Everyone at Allstate is a leader and embraces leadership to advance our goals."

He went on to say that during his five years as head of the company, he is "proud of the progress we have made in making our organization more flexible and innovative and improving the quality of our leadership."

To accomplish this, he says Allstate has changed its organizational structure and improved the quality of its leadership, including recruiting from outside of the company.

"If we were able to jump into a time machine and go back five years, I am not sure we would recognize ourselves. The change has been significant," he says.

The company has had its up-and-downs of late. A number of Allstate's direct agents became upset when the company announced it was changing its compensation structure last year.

The plan calls for base compensation to agents to remain unchanged in 2012 at 10 percent on new and renewal business. In 2013, that changes. Base commission changes from 10 percent to 9 percent. The agency bonus and a new variable compensation component, based on improvements in the agency's business, will give an agency the opportunity to increase its earnings even more. The maximum opportunity will rise from a total of 14 percent to 15 percent in 2013. (The original announcement called for the base compensation to be dropped to 8 percent.)

A sign of acceptance of that change: Wilson says 43 percent of its Allstate sales force attended its recent National Forum. In a post event survey, 82 percent say they felt appreciated and respected as a business owner and 88 percent felt "engaged and positive about Allstate and their role in its future."

As for declines in its share of the auto insurance market business, Wilson called it part of an "intentional strategy to reposition our homeowners business due to the recent increase in severe weather and catastrophes." He adds that where there were no challenges, the auto business grew.

As for the future, he says, "The Internet and social media have made it easier for Americans to be well-informed consumers, more quickly adopt new products and services, and demand greater responsiveness from the businesses they patronize. As a result, customer satisfaction is increasingly important in the insurance industry. Insurers will continue to significantly invest in new products and services and in improving customer satisfaction levels."

—Mark E. Ruquet

(This story has been corrected to reflect that the correct earnout is 15 percent, not 25 percent)

#14 Peter Levene: Lloyd's Lord

No mention of insurance legends would be complete without a discussion of Lloyd's of London, the oldest and most storied name in insurance.

And its public face during a crucial and difficult decade was Peter Levene, Baron Levene of Portsoken.

As chairman of Lloyd's from 2002 to 2011, Levene helped the syndicate reinvigorate its public image following a debacle in the early 1990s of losses by wealthy investors; and he navigated it through equally huge losses stemming from Sept. 11.

"Lloyd's is the oldest, largest, and, some say the only real insurance market in the world," Levene tells PC360. "When I joined in 2002, it was recovering from the shock of the terrible attacks of 9/11—and it had suffered major setbacks to its worldwide reputation and history."

Before he came on board, Levene says, "there were many who had worked in the market for many years, but felt somehow tainted by the association with Lloyd's, largely because of the damage to many of the [illustrious] names who had suffered in very recent years."

When Levene arrived, he recalls, Lloyd's had two priorities. One: "To recognize that this was now, going forward, a market with two sources of capital—private and corporate." And two: "To cease the foolishness of trying to dissociate itself from an unparalleled 300-year-plus history that was world famous.

"Such a history and brand needed to be nurtured and repaired," he continues. "This is what I believe we had to do on a worldwide basis, and I think we succeeded."

Relying on a strategy of using private and corporate capital to back its market "has proven itself in that even in the extremely costly year of 2011, Lloyd's was able to pay its claims and hold its head up high with its reputation restored," he says. "I am delighted that the present management of Lloyd's is working hard to ensure that its reputation can stand proud as one of the giants of the industry."

Charles Landgraf, Lloyd's chief U.S. lawyer at Dewey & LeBoeuf and now at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., observes that during Levene's tenure at Lloyd's, he "was an energetic and enthusiastic proponent for Lloyd's around the world, within the global business community, world governments and market regulators."

Landgraf says one major overlooked accomplishment of Lord Levene was his help in getting a rule from the British government that helped preserve the ancient "names" system that Lloyd's uses to provide equity for its business.

This system involves giving private individuals the right to take on the liabilities associated with insurance risk in return for any profits made from premiums. Many of those backers lost millions in the early 1990s when they were forced to cover heavy losses incurred on asbestos-related claims.

To preserve the system and protect its future, Lloyd's proposed that these backers create an "individual corporate status," a sort of limited-liability entity that would protect them going forward in case of giant losses.

"One of the key things he did was seek and secure this tax law change," says Landgraf. "His familiarity with government process in the UK was very valuable; he was very comfortable in dealing with government."

Currently, Lord Levene is chairman of NBNK Investments in London. Besides serving as Lord Mayor of London and in a key role in the Defense Department of the British government, he also was a top official at Deutsche Bank, the former Bankers Trust International, and both Morgan Stanley and Wasserstein Perella & Co.

—Arthur D. Postal

#13 Ernesta Procope: Triumphant Trailblazer

In an industry dominated by white men, Ernesta Procope navigated her storefront agency through the Civil Rights era to Wall Street. The brokerage, E.G. Bowman, still operates with Procope at the helm as chairman, and provides insurance to more than 2,000 clients, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, non-profits, financial companies and religious institutions as the nation's largest minority and woman-owned brokerage.

In 1953 Procope opened the agency in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. At the time, few insurers provided coverage to the black residents, but Procope described the early days as easy and credits her perseverance for the agency's success.

"I never operated with a complex­—as a woman, as a black woman, as a black. But instead as a person in business," Procope said. "We knew there were problems, but I could not let that be a deterrent to me."

The company continued its moderate, but significant, success until the mid-60s. Race riots threated the neighborhood and one insurer canceled 90 of the agency's property policies.

These cancelations were delivered on the day Procope was at the office of N.Y. Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller. She described the redlining problem and their discussions paved the way for the FAIR Plan, which made homeowners' insurance available to all state residents.

The shock of mass cancellations triggered a change in the agency's focus and direction.

After studying the problems facing the urban poor, N.Y. Senator Robert F. Kennedy implemented the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corp. to develop economic, cultural, and educational improvements. E.G. Bowman won the account and became involved in commercial insurance. Shortly thereafter the agency acquired its first Fortune 500 client: PepsiCo.

In 1979 E.G. Bowman moved to Wall Street, becoming the first major black-owned business to establish there and earning Procope the moniker "The First Lady of Wall Street."

Although she downplays the era's challenges, Ronald L. Allen, immediate past chairman for the National African American Insurance Assn., calls her a trailblazer. "Ernesta entered the insurance industry in the 1950s when two great challenges seemed almost insurmountable: gender and race," he said. "Her pioneering efforts and phenomenal success forged a business model for inclusion within our industry."

—Melissa Hillebrand

#12 Greg Maciag: Delivering ACORD

If the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD) had simply remained "the forms company," as it started out, it still would have had a secure place in the history of the insurance industry.

But stopping there would not have satisfied Greg Maciag, who has been a part of ACORD for 35 years and has been its industry face for almost two decades as its president and CEO. Under his leadership, ACORD has evolved into the leading standards organization for the insurance industry.

"Greg has brought continents together, and ACORD is now recognized as the standards leader around the world," says John Leonard, president and CEO of Maine Employers' Mutual Insurance Co. and chairman of the ACORD board of directors.

Speaking with PC360, Maciag cites three key moments in his years with the organization:

• The merger of ACORD into the Insurance Institute for Research (IIR), a move that placed ACORD in the technology camp with its electronic data interchange (EDI) standards;
• Transitioning from EDI to the XML markup language;
• The merger of ACORD with WISe, a European-based standards organization, which brought ACORD recognition by the London Market and Lloyd's.

"The world got a whole lot smaller over the past 40 years, and pulling together this industry across lines of business and across the globe has been my life's work," Maciag says.

The merger with WISe "was perhaps one of the most personally rewarding moments in my career," Maciag notes. "It wasn't long before I was in Beijing, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Sydney and Zurich. Now you can add Bermuda, Cape Town, Delhi, Johannesburg and Mumbai."

"Greg is a visionary who continually demonstrates that uncanny ability to see a little further down the road than most of the experts in our fine industry," says Leonard, who has known Maciag for more than two decades. "He has an engaging style that provides access to the C-suites and he has helped build a platform that enables our industry to move and share data in a manner that underscores the productivity gains that are essential to our future."

ACORD, says Maciag, "is an incredible organization, and I knew it the first moment I walked into the office 35 years ago. That was a thrilling day for me. I arrived early and didn't have a key to get into the office so I sat in the hallway waiting.

"I still get in early," he adds, "but now I have a key."

—Robert Regis Hyle

#11 William R. Berkley: Consistent Champion

While many of the most recognizable names in insurance earn their reputations for how fast they manage to grow a company, or for the size they manage to grow a company to, there is something to be said for an executive who has built his considerable reputation on consistency—and an insistence that achieving the best risk-adjusted return is more important than growing the fastest or being the biggest.

It's not that William R. Berkley's self-started company, W.R. Berkley Corp., hasn't grown. To the contrary, the executive points out that 40 years ago the company did around $130 million worth of business, whereas this year it is going to do probably around $5.5 to $6 billion worth of business.

But as markets soften and some competitors become obsessed with growth, W.R. Berkley instills a philosophy in its underwriters that it is better to lose business to competitors than it is to lose money by writing bad risks.

"We've had our longstanding excess and surplus lines companies' volumes decline by 25, 30, 40 percent," Berkley says, "and not a single person got laid off. We haven't fired anybody, and we went out and told them what a great job they're doing."

Some large companies, he notes, set volume goals at headquarters and tell underwriters how much business they need to write.

"Well, you can always write business in this world in property and casualty insurance," Berkley says. "If you tell me you want to write X dollars, I can always write X dollars. It doesn't even take any smarts to write that money."

When the directive changes to writing profitable business, he notes, then the volume of business comes into play.

But while Berkley is not willing to write risks at any price, he is willing to write virtually any risk at the right price.

"Hard market or soft market, we are always prepared to quote business," he says of his company's philosophy. "No matter how hard the market, no matter how tight the market, we will always quote on business that we think offers us an opportunity to make a dollar. And that means virtually anything."

Instilling such a culture throughout the organization, especially in one like W.R. Berkley that involves small operating units that are each granted a lot of flexibility, requires the right people, and Berkley credits much of the success of his company to the people within it. In fact, he believes his greatest accomplishment in the insurance industry is finding great people.

"The people who work here come to work here because they love the culture," says Berkley. "They love the idea that being the best is really important here. And being the best isn't always who grows the fastest, who's the biggest—it's the best risk-adjusted return. It's the best management team. It's the guy who understands the business best. It's the people who find the niche in the marketplace that gives them the opportunity to stay there and compete effectively and do a great job for their customers."

And those within the company are buying into that culture. Berkley says that, other than to retirement, the company has only lost one senior officer in the past 20 years. "We just don't lose people," he says, "And that's because they buy in."

Berkley believes his mark on the insurance industry will be his uniquely structured company: a group of small operating units that have the financial strength of a larger enterprise. "It's a structure that has a lot of capacity to compete in the long run with a lot of flexibility," he says.

—Phil Gusman

#10 Dick Bouhan: Today's Specialty

If pure performance is the primary criteria by which a business executive's stature should be judged, then Dick Bouhan is truly a legend.

As a top official at the National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices (NAPSLO) since 1981, Bouhan spearheaded a remarkable transformation of the Excess & Surplus (or specialty) market.

Thirty years ago, E&S was poorly understood; most of the players were small, family-owned operations; and it comprised a miniscule portion—about 5 percent—of the commercial P&C universe.

Today, E&S' share of the market is in the midteens, with premium volume increasing from $2.34 billion dollars in 1981 to well over $30 billion today. And the market is now dominated by large, national wholesalers.

Regarding the sharp growth, Bouhan jokes, "I like to take credit for all of that."

What's more, thanks in large part to ceaseless educational efforts by NAPSLO and expert counseling of federal and state officials by Bouhan himself, "regulators see the role of the marketplace much more clearly today," he tells NU.

Bouhan joined NAPSLO as government relations director. At that time, the organization had 566 member firms that registered an additional 222 branch offices for a total of 788 member locations. Today, NAPSLO has 722 member firms with 792 branch offices for a total of 1,514 member offices.

In 1987 Bouhan was named executive director. He retired last September—which was appropriate, given that the Nonadmitted and Reinsurance Reform Act (legislation he helped craft over eight years) went into effect in July, marking the end of a journey he began in 2003.

"The fact that the surplus-lines [industry] has been recognized in federal law, with some general basic rules as to how it should be regulated and taxed, is a positive [development] for the industry," Bouhan says.

"The British refer to someone who can be entrusted, someone who stays the course and doesn't get rattled, as a 'steady hand.' Dick Bouhan has been a steady hand for the specialty-insurance industry and that will be one of the attributes of his legacy," says Marshall Kath, NAPSLO's 2011 president and CEO of Colemont Insurance Brokers until last year.

Looking back on his career, Bouhan is pleased to note the surplus-lines industry has changed dramatically. In addition to the dramatic premium growth, he takes pride in the shift in perception he helped engineer.

"Thirty years ago, the surplus market was inaccurately seen as consisting of mostly foreign or non-U.S.-based companies coming from 'exotic' island locations and as a market whose solvency was generally problematic," he says.

"The fact is that back then, as is true today, the vast majority of surplus-lines business was written by U.S.-based companies and the dominant foreign insurer in the surplus-lines market was Lloyd's of London," he continues. "And that fact is now generally understood."

In addition, "the misperception that the solvency track record of the surplus-lines market is poor has been replaced by the recognition that the surplus-lines market is as solvent and financially solid, if not more so, than the admitted market," he adds.

—Arthur D. Postal

#9 Ted Kelly: Extending Liberty

Edmund "Ted" Kelly says he never dreamed of being a CEO, but he ended up becoming one of the most successful—and outspoken—leaders ever of an insurance company.

Kelly's reinvention of Liberty Mutual is nothing short of remarkable: He transformed a super-regional player into a highly diversified and global powerhouse—the third-largest insurer by net premiums written on NU's Top 100 list last year, behind only State Farm and Allstate.

Kelly's personal story starts on a farm in Ireland as the fifth of 10 children born to a "very, very poor family," he recently told a group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he graduated with a doctorate in mathematics.

His professional life ends amid a cloud of controversy and negative newsprint in Liberty Mutual's hometown of Boston over Kelly's annual $50 million compensation during his last four years with the company. (He retired a year ago as the insurer's CEO but remains the chairman.)

Beyond an argument about ethical pay, Kelly's accomplishments since he signed on with Liberty Mutual in 1992 as its president and chief operating officer are undeniable.

Liberty Mutual was not in good shape at the time. Kelly said then-CEO Gary Countryman told him during the job interview: "We are in deep trouble. If we don't do something, the last man out is going to have to turn out the lights."

Costs, driven by medical inflation, were far-exceeding estimations in Liberty Mutual's core line of business, Workers' Compensation.

But Kelly, (who, after several teaching opportunities, started his insurance career in the mid-1970s as an actuary with Aetna), said he liked Countryman and "liked the challenge of turning a company around."

Among his first observations: Liberty Mutual was "too committed to the U.S."

And only about a year into his time with the carrier, the company went international—and in an aggressive way. Liberty Mutual now operates in countries across the planet, including China, Japan, India, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Australia, Vietnam, Poland and Turkey.

Domestic acquisitions during Kelly's tenure also diversified the company. Liberty Mutual bought OneBeacon, Prudential's P&C operations and Ohio Casualty.

And then its $6.2 billion buy of Safeco Corp. in 2008 gave Liberty Mutual a strong presence on the West Coast—an emphatic exclamation point on the company's growth into a carrier with a true cross-country footprint.

"These weren't moves for the sake of making moves," observes Chuck Chamness, CEO of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Cos. "[Kelly] brought in a unique skill set and put together a great team—and they prudently grew the company, organically and through acquisitions."

When Kelly was appointed CEO in 1998, total assets at Liberty Mutual were $26.25 billion. At the end of 2010, total assets stood at $63.14 billion. Net premiums written more than tripled to $21.48 billion during the same time and policyholder surplus grew from about $7 billion to about $16 billion.

Kelly's "famously blunt approach," says Chamness, along with his distinct Irish brogue, added to his appeal.

"No one ever walked away from a meeting wondering what he thought," Chamness says.

Among Kelly's most quotable moments: He has predicted North American-only insurers will eventually be "totally irrelevant." He has called Workers' Compensation a "time bomb on the balance sheet of the industry" and has attached the phrase "patent nonsense" to describe commercial-insurance pricing.

When Liberty Mutual Agency Corp. in late 2010 backed off plans to raise about $1.2 billion through an initial public offering, Kelly said, memorably, "insurance stocks stink."

—Chad Hemenway

#8 Jack Byrne: Buffett's 'Babe'

When Warren Buffett speaks, people listen. So who better to quote than the super investor when it comes to the impressive insurance career of Jack Byrne.

Buffett has dubbed Byrne the "Babe Ruth of insurance."

Speaking with NU, Byrne returns the favor by describing Buffett as "the finest business mind I've seen come down the road."

The two men's names are linked together by one of the most recognizable companies in the personal-insurance business: GEICO.

Under the current ownership of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway holding company, GEICO has become one of the country's most widely recognized consumer brands and a huge force in the Personal Auto space.

But it wasn't always so: The insurer was on the brink of bankruptcy until Byrne stepped in as leader and saved it from insolvency.

At the time of GEICO's near-collapse, Byrne was working at Travelers, where he had risen through the ranks to become an executive vice president. But when it came time to pick a new president, the board of directors passed him over.

Byrne says regulators and members of the industry then began to put pressure on him to take on the task of running GEICO to prevent the insurer from going under.

"Why in the world did I accept? I don't know, other than I had just been severely disappointed" by being passed over for president at Travelers.

But his choice paid off quickly. He came into the position at GEICO in 1976, and the company was in the red for the second, third and fourth quarters that year.

But by the first quarter of 1977, it was back in the black. The company's stock soared, return on capital was good, and profits were huge, Byrne says of the company after its fast turnaround.

Byrne modestly credits good fortune for the quick fix. "It was just a miracle," he notes. "A lot of very lucky things had to break for me."

But others credit the comeback to the strategy executed by Byrne, which involved raising $75 million, obtaining reinsurance to cover a portion of the company's risks, and re-underwriting and re-pricing GEICO's book of business, to the extent regulators would allow.

Byrne gained a lot personally at GEICO as well. "One policy I've always followed in my business career: I wanted to take a big personal stake in whatever you ask me to do," he says. If he takes on a failing company, he explains, he won't ask for salary, but will ask for a big stake in the company if he is successful.

"They gave me a very large piece of GEICO," Byrne says.

Of course, it was a risky job to take on. "I look back on it and say, 'What a screwball I was to take that job.' Why would a sound man with a heavy mortgage and two kids in school take that job?"

Looking back now, Byrne says he might have been happy finishing his career at GEICO.

But having achieved enormous success, "I kept looking for new challenges," he says. "I did not know how to be happy. Do you know a lot of 40-year olds who know how to be happy?"

So when a new opportunity presented itself, Byrne jumped.

American Express owned insurer Fireman's Fund, and it had been a good moneymaker in the past. "But suddenly it was an embarrassment to them."

An investment banker for American Express suggested taking Fireman's Fund public, but Byrne says they first needed to "put a pretty face on the cover."

Byrne was offered 10 percent of the company's profits if he could "make magic things happen like at GEICO."

He says Buffett was also involved in the deal to sell Fireman's Fund off to the public. "They wanted another pretty face," he recalls. "Mine wasn't pretty enough."

The company went public in 1985 and Byrne ran Fireman's Fund until 1991 when it was sold to Allianz Group.

Like he did at GEICO, Bryne executed a remarkable turnaround at Fireman's: "We did indeed make a much better company out of it."

When Fireman's Fund was sold to Allianz, Byrne was left with the holding company, "which did not have much—except a lot of money," Byrne says, recalling that he had one small operating company and $3.5 billion from Allianz due to the sale of Fireman's Fund.

"I took that money and went around to see what I could do," Byrne says.

The end result is what is today White Mountains Insurance Group, a Top 40 carrier based on net premiums written.

This means Byrne has bragging rights to that rarest of business accomplishments, a hat trick: three major insurers have him to thank for their current healthy state.

And who knows; if Byrne comes out of retirement, maybe he'll take care of a fourth carrier, doing something his namesake Babe Ruth never did—hitting for the cycle.

—Phil Gusman

#7 'Dickie' Scruggs: Plaintiffs' Pontiff