Risk And Insurance - Power Broker®

Healthcare

2009 Power Broker^® Winners

Kevin J. Downs

Executive Vice President
Willis HRH, Chicago

No Ego

This recognition places as much emphasis on industry knowledge as anything else, and that is one of many areas where Willis HRH's Kevin Downs shines. You can add to that his integrity, which risk managers would always like to see more of.

"The integrity piece is probably the highest compliment I could pay him," said the chief risk officer for a major East Coast-based health system.

According to those who've had the pleasure of working with Downs, he has the respect of the insurance and reinsurance markets, and as someone who leads his firm's national healthcare practice, he has a specific mastery of the healthcare thicket.

Another risk manager of an East Coast healthcare organization switched over to Downs a year ago and is glad she did. Downs was able to construct for her organization an additional $125 million tower next to its existing $125 million tower of excess medical-malpractice and third-party liability coverage for the organization's captive at no additional cost.

"He has a lot of credibility with the insurers. I think that he is able to take a client's loss experience and tell a story about the client to the insurers that is credible and one that they recognize is worth considering," this risk manager said.

Downs is in his fifth year with Willis HRH, after 15 years with Marsh and Johnson & Higgins. All told he has 29 years of experience in the industry. "He has a lot of contacts, he has been in the business for many years and he doesn't really have an ego," one of our sources said.

Cherif Hafez

Senior Vice President
Willis HRH, Cary, N.C.

A Fast Tracker

There are two conclusions to come to after talking to healthcare risk managers about Cherif Hafez. Either Hafez has body doubles or he doesn't sleep a whole lot.

Hafez, who has been with Willis, now Willis HRH, for six years after two years with the Hays Group and six years with Aon, is also looked on as someone with gobs of potential upward mobility.

"I guess my biggest fear is that we are going to lose him, eventually, because someone like him is going to be on a fast track up," said a risk manager who depends on Hafez so much, "I kind of think of him as a son."

This year, Hafez went to bat for a client who had been declined coverage for a series of related losses. Not only were Hafez and his team able to secure an $8 million recovery for the client, the broker and his supporting players negotiated so skillfully that they were left with a happy client and an insurance company that wasn't left "feeling defeated."

Hafez, whose Willis team handles five of the 10 largest healthcare systems in North Carolina, was also able to consolidate the physician risk with the hospital risk for two large clients, squeezing out an additional $50 million limit for employed physician losses. The move saved each client some premium and garnered batch and tower enhancements for the combined programs.

"I think what Cherif helped to do was to bring to our consciousness what the cutting edge was with regard to insurance," said another risk management client.

Patrick Hickey, CPCU, RPLU

Executive Vice President
Willis HRH, New York

Entrepreneurial Spirit

In sniffing out the best insurance brokers, one of the traits clients cherish is the entrepreneurial spirit, and to hear his risk management partners tell it, Willis HRH's Patrick Hickey is blessed with that capability in abundance.

"He's not here to sell us insurance. He's here to figure out what are we trying to accomplish and is there any way he can help us accomplish that," said the CFO of a national PPO network.

Hickey--working on a consulting basis and not a commission basis, mind you--helped this client identify major holes in his coverage: misplaced earthquake coverage and flood coverage where it wasn't needed. In addition, a restructured liability program cut errors-and-omissions premiums by 44 percent when a previous broker felt that such improvement was not possible.

Another healthcare client was getting peppered by voluntary attending physicians who were complaining of a 14 percent increase in their medical-malpractice coverage.

For that client, Hickey engineered the creation of a risk retention group, pulling in Willis' Vermont people, placing the excess insurance and dealing with London. "While still doing the blocking and tackling, he gave us a lot of intellectual capacity, I'll call it," this client said.

Hickey, who earned a bachelor's in economics from Northeastern University and an M.B.A. from Fordham University, has worked for Willis for five years. Before that, he spent seven years with Marsh as senior vice president.

Christopher Kakel

Senior Vice President
Marsh, New York
Christopher.Kakel@marsh.com

Driven by the Vigor of Youth

At only 31 years of age, Christopher Kakel shows us exactly how the insurance industry can benefit from the innovation and daring of youth. After Marsh won the broker of record award for a large New York hospital, Kakel set about revamping the hospital's program.

From a program that provided $25 million in shared limits over a three-year period, Kakel was able to market and bind separate dual $25 million towers of limits for the hospital and voluntary attending physicians.

Not only was he able to find a $1 million reduction in annual premium, but he was also able to negotiate a two-year commitment from the carrier with a flat renewal premium for the second year regardless of loss development.

For another client, Kakel was able to secure drop-down coverage on the client's excess layer, something the carrier on the previous program had been unable to provide, thereby removing a $10 million retention in the event of erosion of the underlying layer.

Aside from the numbers, on the customer service side, here is how another client described him.

"He is on top of everything and is very meticulous," she said. "As a broker, it's tough because they are facing the whole AIG situation, and I have a lot of people that I have to answer to and he is always there helping."

Kakel is a 2000 graduate of Duke University who picked up an M.B.A. from the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business in 2008.

Lorraine Lewis, CISR, CIC

Senior Vice President
Alliant, Houston
llewis@alliantinsurance.com

Not Blowing Smoke

Talk about stepping in to save the day. Within months of winning a contract for a Texas-based health system with hurricane wind exposures, Lorraine Lewis and her team at Alliant set about revamping and remarketing the system's property program--and just in time. Hurricane Dolly pounded the health facility on July 23, just weeks after the new property program had been bound.

The damage grew to $22 million, all of which was covered by the new program. Under the previous program, the client would have been liable for $19 million of the damage. Naturally, the general counsel for the health system can't find enough good things to say about Lewis.

"There are several words that I could use. The descriptors would be highly professional, extremely responsive and highly knowledgeable, and I can't rate those one, two three. Obviously, these are really glowing reports to you, but I promise you, I'm not blowing smoke," this attorney said.

Here is what another Texas-based attorney who helps to manage the insurance program for a health system said about Lewis. "I would say without a doubt that Lorraine is the best person that we have worked with," this attorney said. "I have been doing this for 12 years now, and she has been the most resourceful and innovative of all of the brokers we have worked with."

Lewis came to Alliant five years ago after five years with Aon and nine years with Gallagher.

Rob Marshall, CPCU, RPLU, AIC

Senior Vice President
Willis HRH, New York

Pages of Praise

There are some brokers who win accolades that run paragraphs long. Then there is Willis HRH's Rob Marshall, on whom we received page after page of praise from risk managers across a range of industry sectors, not just healthcare.

Marshall is one of a couple of winning brokers in the healthcare category who seems to grasp the importance of the personal side of the insurance equation, which is: We are all getting educated on best practices, and that the best thing we can do is share that education.

"Once you start working with him, it becomes clear that he has invested time in developing extensive relationships in all corners of the industry," said the risk manager for a New York-based hospital system. "It is also quite apparent that these are genuine relationships based on mutual respect."

Another New York-based risk manager said Marshall helped her shop her emergency medical services program's risk away from Willis HRH to a specialized EMS broker. "Even knowing that he was going to lose that line, he did it because it was the best for us," she said.

In 2008, Marshall steered one client away from a limited excess risk transfer program with a major insurer and instead placed his client into a self-insured trust. For another client, he negotiated a 30 percent cheaper excess malpractice program with dual towers and more favorable captive terms and conditions.