Harleysville Group Appoints Whitlock, Chief Underwriting Officer; Becker, Chief Actuary

Harleysville Group Inc. has appointed Robert G. Whitlock Jr. as senior vice president and chief underwriting officer. He will assume senior management responsibility for Harleysville’s commercial lines
and personal lines underwriting operations, along with its reinsurance
organization.

The company also announced that Allan R. Becker, a 20-year insurance industry veteran, has joined Harleysville and will become chief actuary, replacing Whitlock in that role.

Both appointments will become effective Oct. 1, 2005.

Whitlock has been with Harleysville nearly 15 years since joining the
company in 1991 as assistant vice president and actuary. He was named vice president in 1993, and was elected senior vice president and chief actuary in 1995. A graduate of Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., he is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (FCAS) and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA).

Becker joins Harleysville from ACE USA, where he was vice president and senior actuary. In that position, he managed actuarial pricing support for the company’s U.S.-based workers compensation, commercial umbrella, primary casualty and environmental lines of business. During his 18 years with ACE USA and its predecessor organization, CIGNA Property & Casualty, he held a variety of actuarial management roles, including reserving, pricing and financial
planning. Becker is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa., and also holds the FCAS and MAAA designations.

“These leadership appointments represent significant steps forward in our ongoing efforts to drive greater focus and consistency throughout our organization,” commented Michael L. Browne, Harleysville Group’s president and chief executive officer. “Bob Whitlock’s analytical and management skills, broad business perspective and unique understanding of our organization will serve him well in this new role, which we are confident will contribute significantly to our ongoing efforts to improve our overall performance and profitability.

“Allan Becker will add further depth to our leadership team,” Browne
added. “He brings to his new role impressive actuarial credentials and strong management experience that will allow him to build on the solid foundation we have established in our actuarial organization. With the appointments scheduled to go into effect as we start our fourth quarter, we expect the transition of responsibilities to be seamless-enabling us to focus clearly on achieving our objectives in 2006 and beyond.”

Topics Underwriting