10 people make insurance history

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The American insurance industry had an early champion in Benjamin Franklin. Though best known as a colorful statesman, signer of the Declaration of Independence and inventor, he also was instrumental in establishing the country's first incorporated fire insurance company, The Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire, in 1752.

Franklin's interest in fire insurance was sparked by personal experience, and he once advised a friend that, in case of fire, “You may be forced [as I was] to leap out of windows and hazard your neck to avoid being over roasted.” Many insurance industry leaders of the past 80 years may have been less flamboyant than Franklin, but their contributions are just as significant. Here's a list of some of the most notable.

William David Winter
An authority and innovator in the field of marine insurance, William David Winter in 1919 authored “Marine Insurance: Its Principles and Practice,” the definitive text on the subject. As cofounder and chairman of the American Cargo War Risk Exchange during World War II, he guided the marine insurance industry, stressing the importance of writing insurance to value and applying deductibles to package forms. He spent most of his career with Atlantic Mutual Insurance, where he served as president.

S. Bruce Black
As president of Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. from 1924 to 1956, Black was an early proponent of the view that loss prevention is an integral part of the insurance process that provides economic and social benefits for business and society as a whole. He pushed programs to improve industrial safety and rehabilitation of injured workers, which became a humane and cost-effective element of workers' compensation.

Edwin W. Patterson
Dr. Edwin Patterson was the major force in the 1939 codification of New York's insurance law, acknowledged as the model for many state insurance codes, which emphasized a balanced relationship between the regulator and the regulated. Patterson strongly believed in protecting the public from the abuses of undercapitalized insurance ventures and poorly managed insurers, and also believed that prospective insurance entrepreneurs be made aware of the rules and forced into a position of strength before being licensed. Staying true to his conviction, he demanded that the code be prepared in its entirety and then be presented to the insurance industry for its review and comment. In this way, those being regulated could see the full implication of the proposed legislation and comment on its impact on companies' operations.

Harry Loman
When the American Institute for CPCU was founded in 1942, through the combination of business and university efforts, insurance professor Dr. Harry J. Loman, of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, served as the first dean. Under his leadership, all segments of the property/casualty insurance industry joined together to promote technical competence and ethical behavior, resulting in the development of the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) professional designation program. It was the first program to establish academic, experience and ethics requirements for a professional designation in property and casualty insurance.

Senators Patrick McCarran & Homer Ferguson
Nevada Senator Patrick McCarran, a Democrat, and Michigan Senator Homer Ferguson, a Republican, co-authored the McCarran-Ferguson Act in 1945, a far-reaching bill that clarified the power of individual states to regulate insurance and limited application of many federal statutes to the insurance industry. McCarran also was a staunch anti-Communist during the post-war years, while Ferguson co-sponsored the bill that added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Maurice “Hank” R. Greenberg
In 1962, American International Group founder Cornelius Vander Starr named Hank Greenberg the head of AIG's failing North American holdings. In 1968, Starr picked Greenberg as his successor. As chairman and chief executive of American International Group (AIG), the fiercely competitive Greenberg drove his company like a steamroller, plowing over other insurers to become an insurance-financial behemoth. Under his watch, AIG also unfortunately became the poster child for accounting irregularities and bid-rigging, which forced his ouster in 2005. It was during this period that AIG amassed the credit-default swaps in its AIG Financial Products unit that blew up in 2008, leading to a $170 billion federal bailout of AIG. Today, at 84, Greenberg heads C.V. Starr & Co. In an industry of relatively subdued personalities, the larger-than-life Greenberg has stood out as a man with a loud voice who wants to be heard. Jack Byrne
Jack Byrne's 55-year career in the insurance industry is marked by his rescue of Geico Insurance from the brink of disaster after assuming chairmanship of the almost-insolvent company in 1976. He enacted tough cost-control measurers: re-underwriting the entire book of business, increasing rates, obtaining temporary reinsurance relief and receiving backing for an additional capital infusion. He performed a similar feat for Fireman's Fund in 1985, fixing the balance sheet by increasing reserves and refocusing the investment operations on total return rather than income. Allianz purchased almost all of Fireman's Fund in 1991, leaving Fund American, now known as White Mountains Insurance Group, a Bermuda company with headquarters in New Hampshire, that has purchased other companies such as Esurance and OneBeacon. Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Spitzer proved that the “bully pulpit” isn't just for first-tier officials when he used his position as New York Attorney General to uncover corruption and fraud up and down the insurance stream. After taking the mutual fund industry to task, he started on the property-casualty insurance industry in 2004. Spitzer's charges that broker Marsh & McClennan accepted payment from and engaged in bid-rigging with insurers without the knowledge of paying clients gave the industry a black eye and hurt some major players. It also raised the question of contingency commissions for brokers and agents at a time when their revenue streams were particularly vulnerable. After a successful run for governor in 2006, Spitzer self-destructed when a scandal of his own as the reputed client of a prostitution ring drove him from office. J. Robert Hunter
Actuary J. Robert Hunter has spent most of his 50-year career in the insurance industry as one of its most active critics. He's been administrator of the Federal Insurance Administration, president of the National Insurance Consumer Organization, insurance commissioner for the State of Texas, consultant and long-term director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America. Along the way, he has testified against almost every proposal of the insurance industry, often supplying data and models whose accuracy and validity are challenged by industry groups. Recently, Hunter has been urging repeal of the McCarran-Ferguson Act.