Plymouth Rock Assurance Corporation, a Boston-based auto insurer, has appointed Matthew H. Cronin as senior marketing representative and Sean P. Farrelly as marketing representative, both in Connecticut.

Cronin will provide sales and marketing support to Plymouth Rock agents in Middlesex and Hartford counties, using his nearly two decades of Connecticut insurance industry experience. Prior to joining Plymouth Rock, he had worked in management capacities for firms such as Prudential and Liberty Mutual, where he acted as manager for the New England region.

Farrelly will provide sales and marketing support to agents in New London, Tolland, and Windham counties. Prior to this position, he spent the past decade in agency management and marketing roles, including supervision of over 300 independent insurance agencies in Connecticut with Great American Insurance.

The Plymouth Rock Group of Companies writes auto and home insurance throughout the Northeast, including automobile insurance in Connecticut.

The National Association of Professional Insurance Agents has named David M. Eppstein as director of state affairs. He will be working with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the National Conference of Insurance Legislators and other national policy organizations that address insurance legislation and regulation.

Eppstein comes to PIA from his previous position as a counsel to the House Committee on Financial Services, where he participated in the drafting of legislation and the selection of witnesses for hearings. Prior to joining the Committee staff in 2001, Eppstein was legislative assistant to Rep. Robert Ehrlich (R-Maryland), who is now the Governor of Maryland; and a legal intern in the office of House Committee on Financial Services Chairman Michael Oxley (R-Ohio).

PIA also announced the appointments of two new legal project interns, Tonio D. DeSorrento and Jason Baum.

The industry’s standards organizaion, ACORD, has appointed Cindy Maike as director of standards planning. In this new position, Maike will be responsible for supporting and coordinating strategic standards initiatives at ACORD across all of the standards programs. She will work with the ACORD Business Subcommittees for Life and Annuity, Property & Casualty/Surety, and Reinsurance and Large Commercial domains. This will include working with the development of the business process models as a new component of the ACORD standards framework. Since 1995, Maike has been with IBM in various business consulting and strategy roles.

American Re-Ins. Co., Princeton, N.J., has appointed Craig Howie as controller, responsible for managing the company’s financial reporting department. Howie was most recently manager of the company’s financial operations department, which includes the purchasing and payroll, reinsurance security, corporate tax and financial analysis units. He will retain management oversight of those units. Prior to joining American Re in 1989, Howie was a senior tax consultant with Ernst & Young.

David P. Wehner, who has been chairman of the New York Workers Compensation Board since 2004, has left that post to become executive director of the New York State Insurance Fund. Wehner fills the NYSIF vacancy left by the departure of Ken Ross as executive director earlier this year. Since that time, Christopher Barclay, secretary to the Board of Commissioners, and Douglas Hayden, general attorney, have been sharing director duties. NYSIF is a non-profit competitive insurance carrier that sells workers’ compensation and disability benefits insurance to any employer doing business in New York State. NYSIF writes about 37 percent of the market.

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. announced that Michael Golden has been appointed Northeast Regional Manager of the company’s Brokerage Retail Division. He will report directly to James Gault, president of the Brokerage Retail Division. Golden, who joined Gallagher in early October 2005, has more than 24 years of insurance industry experience. He began his insurance career at Marsh & McLennan’s Nuclear Insurance Practice. Over the years, he held key positions there as global practice leader, head of New England Operations, head of New York Operations, chief compliance officer, and most recently chief market relations officer.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners presented Michael J. Moriarty, director of financial solvency strategy with the New York State Insurance Department, with the Robert Dineen Award. Established in 1989, the award is awarded to an individual in recognition of outstanding achievement as a career regulator. Moriarty serves as the chair of the Valuation of Securities Task Force and has guided the Securities Valuation Office through major transformation. Additionally, he has acted as a lead regulator in responding to concerns surrounding the industry’s use of finite reinsurance.

Six months after she announced creation of the office, Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell has named Barbara Fernandez to lead the state’s Insurance and Financial Services Business Development Office. The office is an effort to attract and retain more insurance and financial services jobs. The IFS agency is within the Department of Economic and Community Development.

Fernandez has 25 years of experience in the insurance industry. She is a former assistant vice president for international business at The Phoenix in Hartford. Prior to that, she served as director for corporate services as well as director of training and development for the company. Currently she serves as chief executive officer of Guakia, Inc., a bilingual school of Hispanic music, art and culture in the Hartford region.

HCC Specialty Underwriters Inc., a specialty underwriting agency subsidiary of HCC Insurance Holdings, Inc., announced that Glenn B. Dorr III has joined its Wakefield, Mass., office. Dorr has been in the industry since 1991 and most recently served as vice president of the Sports and Entertainment Division of BISYS Special Markets in New Jersey. Dorr has also been with The Hanleigh Companies, Aon and Northwestern Mutual.

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