Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. has named Stephen Whelan vice president of commercial and financial risks for the company’s Hartford Financial Products (HFP) division.
In this newly created position, Whelan, who recently worked at American International Group, will oversee HFP’s entire domestic insurance portfolio for larger risks, including commercial, financial services, diversified, and transactional risk accounts.
HFP is an underwriter of directors and officers, employment practices liability, errors and omissions, and crime insurance.
Whelan will report to Michael Dandini, who was named senior vice president and head of HFP in June.
Both men will be leading a division of The Hartford that is rebuilding its staff, after losing dozens of employees to a chief competitor earlier this year.
The departures led to The Hartford filing suit against three of its former executives and Arch Capital Group Ltd., accusing them of taking more than 60 of HFP’s 250 employees and trade secrets in “an unlawful corporate raid of unprecedented proportions.”
The three executives — David McElroy of Connecticut, John Rafferty of Illinois, and Michael Price of New Jersey — left HFP in early June to join Arch Insurance Group Inc., a New York-based unit of Arch Capital in Bermuda.
The three men are working in a new unit at Arch which The Hartford says was “created to service the business that Arch and McElroy intended to steal from The Hartford by any necessary means,” according to the lawsuit which is filed in New York Supreme Court.
In the lawsuit The Hartford also accuses Arch executives and employees of sending “threatening and bullying e-mail, telephone calls and text messages” to current HFP staff, urging them to leave the company.
David Snowden, a spokesman for The Hartford, said that, as of this week, the company has hired 18 new employees and received more than 250 applications to fill the vacant positions.
