We are pleased to announce that Mary Merkel and Yanina (Yana) Montau-Thatcher have been appointed to the Board of Directors for Frankenmuth Mutual Insurance Company, as well as Patriot Insurance Company and Patriot Life Insurance Company.
Mary was elected to the Board of Directors on Jan. 31. She retired from Zurich Insurance Company in 2016 after serving as the Chief Underwriting Officer for Zurich North America. In this role, she led the development of the underwriting strategy for the United States and Canada across property, casualty and specialty lines of business. She was responsible for all aspects of underwriting, including risk selection, actuarial pricing, predictive analytics, governance and compliance.
In her 30-plus years with Zurich, Mary held the positions of Chief Underwriting Officer for Casualty on a worldwide basis and Chief Underwriting Officer for Zurich’s Global Corporate business in the United States. She has extensive underwriting experience across multiple lines of business and geographies. Before joining Zurich, she began her career at Royal Insurance Company.
Mary holds a bachelor’s degree in Risk Management/Insurance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) and has earned her Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Praedicat, Inc., and Real Time Risk Solutions.
Yana was appointed to the Board of Directors on April 28. She retired from Selective Insurance Group in 2019 after serving as Senior Vice President and Chief Risk Officer. In this role, she led enterprise-wide risk oversight and placement of all (re)insurance and other risk transfer mechanisms. She was also a member of all major management committees, including management investment, underwriting, claims, emerging risk (chair) and emerging management (chair) and served on the Selective Insurance Group, Inc., subsidiary boards from 2010-2019.
In her 25-year insurance career, Yana also held the positions of Vice President of Reinsurance and ERM Manager, Assistant Vice President and Assistant Controller. She has extensive reinsurance, enterprise risk management, financial and operational experience. Before joining Selective, she began her career at Frontier Insurance Company.
Yana holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the State University of New York in New Paltz and a Master of Science degree in Accounting from the State University of New York Institute of Technology. She earned her Associate in Reinsurance (ARe) designation in 1998 and her Associate in Insurance Accounting and Finance (AIAF) designation in 2002. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Karen Ann Quinlan Charitable Foundation.
Both Mary and Yana will be valuable additions to our Board of Directors. To view our complete list of officers and directors, please visit our website.
