Louis Gagnon to Lead Foresters Financial: Personnel Moves

What You Need to Know

Louis Gagnon has been Foresters' chief operating officer.
Jim Barrett will oversee customer relationship management at Policygenius.
Christopher Smith will help life and annuity issuers get their own coverage.

Foresters Financial says Louis Gagnon will succeed James Boyle as CEO in January.

Boyle, who has been Forester’s chairman, plans to retire from the company’s board in February.

Gagnon became Foresters’ COO in January. Before that, he spent more than 30 years at Mercer. When he left Mercer, he was head of its U.S. and Canada region.

He has a degree from Concordia University.

Boyle took over as Foresters’ CEO in January 2018. Earlier, he spent 20 years at John Hancock Financial Services.

Policygenius

Policygenius, a life insurance web broker, has hired Jim Barrett to be head of customer relationship management.

Barrett previously was customer insights leader at Homesite. Earlier in his career, he was vice president of analytics and experimental design at Fidelity Investments.

Somerset Re

Somerset Reinsurance Ltd., a company that sells reinsurance to U.S. life and annuity issuers, has hired Christopher Smith to be head of structured reinsurance.

Previously, Smith was head of global head of financial solutions for SCOR Global Life. He started out in reinsurance at Transamerica Life Reinsurance.

He has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Florida State University.

Gravie

Gravie — a company that runs health benefits programs based on individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements and similar types of arrangements — has hired Jay Sheehy to be chief underwriting officer.

Earlier in his career, Sheehy was chief underwriting officer at Aetna. He also has worked for EmblemHealth, AIG and Cigna.