Personnel Changes: AXA Equitable, Guardian, Others

AXA Equitable Life Insurance Co. has named a former New York insurance department official to head its insurance products practice group.

AXA Equitable, New York, part of AXA S.A. Paris, announced that Kermitt Brooks, most recently an official with the New York State Insurance Department, has been named associate general counsel in charge of the insurance products practice group with the company’s law department.

Brooks, with the insurance department since 2007, had been first deputy superintendent responsible for the state agency’s Life Bureau. He had also been deputy attorney general of operations at the New York State Office of the Attorney General from 2002 to 2007.

In other personnel announcements:

The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America appointed Christopher Stout as a regional vice president for Georgia and Alabama.

The appointment was part of a company program to expand its national retirement solutions sales force to support its strategy of offering its specialized retirement products to small and mid-sized businesses across the U.S., according to Guardian, New York.

Stout joins Guardian from Automatic Data Processing Inc., where he was retirement services district manager for the state of Georgia.

Standard Insurance Company, Portland, Ore., hired Katherine Durham as vice president of marketing and communications.

Standard, a subsidiary of StanCorp Financial Group Inc., says Durham will lead the corporate marketing and communications group and be responsible for corporate-wide marketing strategy and services, corporate communications and e-business.

Previously, she was vice president of marketing for Hewlett-Packard Inc.’s Americas Imaging and Printing Group, Palo Alto, Calif.