People moves: Ciak Joins Guy Carpenter's Healthcare Team from BMS Group; CRC Specialty Makes Hires Across Underwriting and Brokerage Teams. September 4, 2026 Ciak Joins Guy Carpenter's Healthcare Team from BMS Group Jessica Ciak joined the healthcare segment Guy Carpenter as the firm's as a senior vice president, focusing on the U.S. medical professional liability sector. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ciak reports to Martha Jacobs, Guy Carpenter's healthcare segment leader. Ciak joins Guy Carpenter from BMS Group, where she most recently served as a senior vice president. She has over 25 years of reinsurance experience, having placed treaty reinsurance across a wide range of property/casualty products, most recently with a focus on specialty lines, including medical professional liability. Guy Carpenter is a business of Marsh and a leading global risk and reinsurance specialist. CRC Specialty Makes Hires Across Underwriting and Brokerage Teams CRC Group hired four professionals across its underwriting and brokerage teams nationwide. Hart Slade joined CRC Specialty as an underwriting team leader. Based in Sumter, South Carolina, Slade has over a decade of personal lines underwriting experience, including work with high-net-worth and hard-to-place risks. Brian Stephens joined CRC Specialty as a broker based in Austin, Texas. Stephens brings nearly two decades of experience across E&S brokerage, underwriting, branch leadership, and business development. His background includes managing all-lines E&S placements, leading underwriting operations and building relationships across the retail and carrier marketplace. Tyler Fuchs has joined CRC Specialty as an underwriting team lead in Charleston, South Carolina. Fuchs brings several years of commercial insurance experience, having progressed through underwriting support roles. His background includes commercial risk evaluation, account servicing and underwriting operations. Alyssa Scher joined CRC Group as a senior associate underwriting team leader in Tampa, Florida. Scher brings more than five years of underwriting experience. Her background includes account management, risk assessment and underwriting operations. Was this article valuable? Interested in agencies? Get automatic alerts for this topic.

CRC Specialty hires four specialists across Florida, Texas and South Carolina. Three of the four hires land in the states where admitted carrier pullback from property lines has been sharpest. The placements are deliberate, not coincidental. CRC Specialty, the wholesale distribution arm of CRC Group, has added four professionals across underwriting and brokerage roles, with placements in Florida, Texas, and South Carolina. Those three states consistently rank among the highest-volume surplus lines markets in the country, alongside California and New York, according to AM Best research published in April 2025. The hires arrive as the US excess and surplus (E&S) lines market hits a record $129.8 billion in direct premiums written in 2024. That marks its seventh consecutive year of double-digit growth, according to AM Best. Demand for experienced wholesale underwriters and brokers is intensifying. Four hires, four specialisms. Hart Slade (pictured, left) joins as underwriting team leader in Sumter, South Carolina. He brings more than a decade of personal lines underwriting experience, with a particular focus on high-net-worth clients and hard-to-place risks. His background includes managing significant books of business, supporting portfolio growth, and mentoring underwriting staff. Brian Stephens (pictured, center) joins as a broker in Austin, Texas. Stephens brings close to 20 years spanning E&S brokerage, underwriting operations, and branch leadership. His background includes managing all-lines E&S placements and building relationships across retail and carrier channels. Tyler Fuchs takes up the position of underwriting team lead in Charleston, South Carolina. His background in commercial risk evaluation and account servicing positions him to support CRC's retail agency partners on the operational side of placement. Alyssa Scher (pictured, right) joins the Tampa, Florida office as senior associate underwriting team leader. She brings more than five years in underwriting across account management, risk assessment, and team development. Why wholesale capacity matters now. The geographic and specialist spread of the hires reflects where E&S pressure is concentrated. Florida and Texas carry among the highest catastrophe exposure of any US markets. Admitted carriers have pulled back from property lines in both states, redirecting volume to the non-admitted channel. AM Best noted in its April 2025 report that extreme weather and rising loss costs had prompted admitted writers to reassess their risk appetite. That has created openings for surplus lines carriers to absorb displaced business. That dynamic is reshaping how retail brokers operate. According to IBA's 2025 5-Star Wholesale Brokers and MGAs report, 33% of retail brokers now conduct more than half their business through wholesale partners. That is up from 23% the previous year. E&S growth did moderate in 2025. AM Best reported in January 2026 that surplus lines premiums grew 9.7% through the third quarter of 2025, compared with 13.5% over the same period in 2024. The slowdown reflected competitive pressure in commercial property, cyber, and directors and officers (D&O) liability lines. Even so, the segment continued absorbing complex risks that admitted carriers were declining - particularly in catastrophe-exposed property and high-hazard casualty. CRC's broader push. The four hires sit within a wider expansion at CRC Group. In May 2025, the company acquired ARC Excess & Surplus, a boutique management and professional liability wholesale broker with more than 250 carrier partners and over $1 billion in annual premium. The deal strengthened CRC's ExecPro professional liability practice. CRC Group places $32 billion in annual premium across property and casualty and employee benefits, according to the company. It operates through approximately 6,300 staff across the United States and 11 countries.

CRC Group builds a transformation office - and names the problem it is solving. Eighteen months after escaping bank ownership, CRC is consolidating data, AI and REDY into one coordinated strategy across businesses that have been operating independently since the McGriff and Crump sales. CRC Group has announced an enterprise-wide transformation strategy centered on a newly created Transformation Management Office, intended to bring the wholesale specialty distributor's data, AI and technology capabilities together across its businesses. Matt Spriggs will lead the office in a newly created role, chief enterprise transformation officer, while Jason Dufner has been promoted to chief information officer to lead CRC's information technology organization. Dave Obenauer, CEO of CRC Group, framed the office as central to how the company plans to compete going forward. "Transformation involves every aspect of our business and builds on our strengths as we find new ways to create greater value for our clients and drive long-term growth," Obenauer said, adding that CRC intends to help shape where the wholesale specialty industry goes rather than simply react to change within it. Spriggs joined what was then Truist Insurance Holdings in 2021 as CIO for the entire enterprise, overseeing technology, cybersecurity and innovation across all of its subsidiaries. Dufner, meanwhile, has served as CRC's chief technology officer since 2022 after roles at Truist, SunTrust and Flagstar Bank. His promotion to CIO fills the CRC-specific technology leadership position more directly. The independence context behind the timing. CRC's transformation strategy lands roughly 18 months after the business fully separated from Truist Financial Corporation. Private equity firms Stone Point Capital and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, along with Mubadala Investment Company, completed their $15.5 billion acquisition of what was then Truist Insurance Holdings in May 2024. The company then sold its retail brokerage arm, McGriff, to Marsh McLennan for $7.75 billion and divested its life insurance distribution business, Crump, before rebranding as CRC Group to reflect a narrower focus on wholesale distribution and underwriting. Company leadership has previously described that period as an opportunity to invest and operate more independently after having been "treated like a bank" under its former ownership structure. Central to the new strategy is REDY, CRC's proprietary data and analytics platform, which the company says will be applied more broadly across the enterprise alongside AI tools and its proprietary capital vehicles. The Transformation Management Office is intended to coordinate these existing capabilities across CRC's various operating units rather than introduce entirely new technology from scratch. Part of a steady pace of activity across CRC's businesses. This announcement follows a year of consistent expansion and leadership activity across CRC's various operating businesses. The company recently completed acquisitions including Risk Transfer Partners, a Dallas-based casualty wholesale brokerage, and has continued adding leadership across its portfolio, including Insurance Business's own reporting on Starwind Specialty Insurance Services naming Ashley Orth as chief operating officer earlier this month. That pattern of steady acquisitions paired with leadership investment across individual units suggests the new Transformation Management Office is meant to coordinate an already active period of organizational growth rather than respond to a specific operational problem. Why this matters for brokers and retail partners. For retail agents and brokers who work with CRC's various wholesale and underwriting businesses, a coordinated data and technology strategy across the enterprise could mean more consistency in how quoting, underwriting data and AI-assisted tools show up across CRC's different units over time, rather than each business developing its own tools independently. Given how recently CRC completed its separation from Truist and how much acquisition activity has followed since, brokers working with multiple CRC-affiliated businesses may want to watch for signs of increased coordination between previously distinct operating units.