On the Move (May 01, 2004)

Jean-Francois Blais will take over as CEO of AXA Canada with news of the retirement of Jean-Denis Talon. Blais has been with the company since 1988, most recently as president and COO. Talon will remain as chairman of the company he has served for 22 years. Insurance Search Bureau announces the appointment of Sean Cassidy as manager, sales and marketing. Cassidy has been in the insurance industry for seven years, most recently as implementation manager with Castek Inc. With the announcement that the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) is handing its individual claims investigation business over to Forensic Investigations Canada, the company has acquired several former IBC investigators including: Ken Holmberg, Ted Lachuk, Barry Schindel, Ian Hall, Ron Casey, Mike Norton, Jean Desrosiers and Bill Rodgers. Also former IBC western region director Shane Devlin will join Forensic Investigations as vice president, investigative services.

Chubb Insurance Co. of Canada announces the retirement of Udo Nixdorf, senior vice president and manager of Chubb’s specialty insurance division, after more than 40 years with the company. The new manager of specialty insurance is Tom Warden, who has been with Chubb since 1981, and is also a senior vice president with the company.

The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) has recently published two new studies. The first, by Alan Davenport, looks at the relationship between quake magnitude, epicentral distance and shock amplitude and its application to seismic zoning. The second, by B. Visscher, G.A. Kopp and P.J. Vickery concerns testing of a residential gable-roofed house model against the destructive forces of wind. Both studies can be found at www.iclr.org.

Crawford Canada Marine Services has been appointed Lloyd’s agent in Canada in five cities: Victoria, Nanaimo, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Thunder Bay. It is already Lloyd’s agent in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. The designation involves provision of a range of surveying services to the maritime market, although many agencies have also diversified to aviation, property, motor and liability market services.