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Senior Vice President & Principal
Roach Howard Smith & Barton, Dallas

Offering Good Counsel

Doug Jones' clients commend him for thinking like a detail-oriented risk manager as well as their big-picture broker. "In one case, Doug showed me where we were over-assessing risk and in that case, he ran all kinds of analysis for me, where he showed benchmarking and many other technical matters to me," said Thomas N. Tipton Jr., chief financial officer of Interphase Corp. "So in general, basically I have superior insurance at a much lower cost. He probably saved me 25 percent on my insurance cost in his first year."

At fast-growing e-Rewards Inc., Kathleen Rowley, senior vice president, legal and tax, said Jones has been especially helpful in providing advice as her company expands in overseas markets. "Doug has given us very good counsel on how we can best protect our corporate assets, how we can layer our insurance with errors and omissions coverage, and also cyberliability," Rowley said.

In one case in the past year, Jones, senior vice president and principal at Roach Howard Smith & Barton, secured enhanced technology errors and omissions for another client with $10 million limits and comprehensive cyber protection that included prior acts coverage. And he secured vastly improved coverage at a rate less than what the company previously paid.

"Doug is very technical in his understanding of insurance, but his relationship skills are also very good," said David Chisum, vice president and chief financial officer, with the MRI family of companies.

"He is very thorough in understanding our business so he can accurately assess our risks. As a result, he has saved us significant amounts of money."

Senior Vice President
Willis, New York

A Global Perspective

Helped by his extensive legal experience in the United States and abroad, Christopher Keegan is cited for his excellent global perspective.

"We're a global company and Chris has a good global perspective," said Pat Boyle, treasurer of NYSE Euronext. "Because of his legal background, when he is looking at a contract he is eyeing it from more than just a broker's standpoint."

In addition, Boyle noted: "Chris gets it when you talk to him about the technological buzzwords we float. Also, we had a significant, difficult claim in the past year that he helped us navigate through." The director of insurance risk management at a major financial institution praised Keegan, who serves as a national resource at Willis for cyber and errors and omissions coverage, for his ability to communicate with senior management.

"He also is able to go into the marketplace and buy what I call best-in-class insurance coverage," this executive said. "And when I compare the product that we acquired through Chris and his team, to other terms I've seen from other products, I consistently find my coverage is broader, has better coverage and conditions, and still is obtained at a very favorable premium compared with other programs."

Nancy Perkins, director, insurance risk management at AOL, said what impressed her and other executives at her company about Keegan was his ability to understand the nature of AOL and explain its positioning to the markets.

Account Executive
Aon, San Francisco

Cutting-Edge Challenges

Name the two biggest initial public offerings in the technology space in the past year or so and Michael Ricksen and his team figured prominently in them.

Ricksen and his team handled all of the executive liability placements for the Facebook and Zynga initial public offerings. With all the attendant media publicity, there were additional complexities to the placements, which made it challenging and exciting for the team.

In addition, Ricksen and his team handled executive liability for Yahoo!

"Mike helped us manage the Facebook IPO calendar with all the adjustments for our D&O that we were going to need every step of the way, honoring confidentiality and using just the right number of people at the right time," said Cipora Herman, former vice president of finance and treasurer at Facebook, and now chief financial officer of the San Francisco 49ers.

Jay Monahan, deputy general counsel at Zynga Inc., said of Ricksen: "We started out with another D&O broker in our early days but then it became clear we needed to up our game and that's how we ended up switching to Aon."

Monahan noted that Ricksen, an account executive with Aon Risk Solutions in San Francisco, is "the point person."

"He's at all our meetings," Monahan said. "The first thing he and his team did was scour all our documents and they immediately noticed some deficiencies in the coverage language, a couple of which were significant."

Senior Vice President
Wells Fargo, Madison, N.J.

A Passion for the Subject

Meredith Schnur's clients underscore that she has an overriding passion for her work in the cyber risk and network security liability space.

"She could talk about it all day and never lose steam and never become boring," observed Josh Harwood, manager of insurance programs at Chicago-based Telephone and Data Systems Inc. "That's her core attribute."

Harwood added that Schnur, who is leader of the Technology, Privacy and Network Risk practice at Wells Fargo Insurance Services USA Inc., has been exceptional at making sure what insurance his company buys fits exactly what its exposures are. "She digs in and manuscripts a policy that is just right for us," he added.

George Liddy, manager of risk management for Sprint Nextel Corp., said his firm chose Wells Fargo because it was so impressed with Schnur. "That's how they got the business," Liddy said.

"Then she did a wonderful job working with us and our carriers to customize our policy to fill our needs," Liddy said. "She is very willing to take the time to educate me and our executive team. She is happy to do it. She's very responsive, never any delay."

At the famous Churchill Downs race track, Mike Anderson, vice president, finance and treasurer, said: "I don't think I've ever gone more than 30 minutes without a return call from her, whatever the time is."

Anderson cited a particularly tense situation facing Churchill Downs in the past year when Schnur was the first person he called. She produced rapid results, he said.

Senior Vice President
Willis, Cleveland

Expert at Relationships

Tom Srail is known for an exceptional ability to build relationships, both within client companies and with the markets.

"Within the last year or so, Tom has helped us develop an internal dialogue that has assisted me in reaching out to different segments within our organization that are affected by some of the privacy and network security issues," said Benjamin Ford, manager of risk management services at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. "He assisted us in establishing best practices, things that we can do internally that don't always tie back to insurance policies but that are good ways to mitigate the risk and liability aspects of our business."

Jan Lubar, senior director of risk management at Minneapolis-based Carlson Cos., said that there are three things that stand out about Srail, who works in the FINEX North America, Cyber and E&O team at Willis. First, he is a technical expert in his field. Second, he has an excellent understanding of many areas of insurance coverage, not just cyber risk. And third, bringing it all together, he is a great communicator.

Mary Ellen Moriarty, vice president of property and casualty at the Chicago-based Educational & Institutional Insurance Administrators, said of Srail: "Tom has great relationships with the markets. Every year at renewal time, Tom comes up with alternatives and every year without fail, we have broadened our coverage and we have added something new based on his knowledge of what's going on in the marketplace as well as his ability to negotiate effectively."

Vice President
Aon, San Francisco

A Social Media Maestro

Sarah Stephens, a vice president at Aon Risk Solutions in San Francisco, is exceptional when it comes to professional, media and cyberliability insurance, but her clients see her especially as a maestro when it comes to social media concerns. "I'm a bit of a Luddite and some of this social media stuff is kind of lost on me, so it's helpful to be able to rely on someone like Sarah who¿s in the midst of a lot of the changes that are taking place in that area," said the finance director of a major financial services company. "She's right up on the most recent technological changes. That's a great strength for us."

For Margarita Seeley, director, global treasury at Clearwire, a Seattle area wireless high speed Internet service provider, Stephens rode to the rescue when the company's broker was in danger of losing its account because of inadequate service.

"Sarah has the full package," said Seeley. "We were ready to go elsewhere until the broker put Sarah on our account. We've now had two renewals where we needed to improve on and she's been wonderful at negotiating, coming up with some creative solutions and bringing good options to the table.

"She's really come through for us in some areas in which she's pulled some important things out of the hat," Seeley added.

Greg Wong, vice president of finance at QuinStreet Inc., in Foster City, Calif., said of Stephens: "I work with Sarah constantly and she's been a big sounding board for me."