Effective immediate, Mario Rizzo is chief operating officer. He will be responsible for the Northbrook, Illinois-based insurer’s Property-Liability and Protection Services businesses.
Rizzo, who has been with Allstate for over 30 years, was previously president of Property-Liability. Taking that role now will be Jess Merten, who had been Allstate’s chief financial officer. Merten will report to Rizzo.
John Dugenske, president of investments and corporate strategy, is now the interim CFO while Allstate searches for someone for the position.
Allstate CEO Tom Wilson said the changes are the “next logical step to complete our ‘transformative growth’ initiative and enable us to leverage artificial intelligence to better serve customers, earn returns for shareholders and create opportunity for employees.”
The strategy has been in place for years. For several years, a key has been steep increases in auto insurance rates to improve profitability. Early this year, the insurer said it had reached profitability targets in auto. Allstate’s auto segment turned in an underwriting profit of $1.8 billion for full year 2024, reversing a loss of $1.1 billion the prior year.
“Clearly, it is time for both carriers and reinsurers that might have stayed on the sidelines in recent years to take a fresh look at this market, if they have not done so already,” reads a recent report from Gallagher Re, one of the largest reinsurance brokers and frequent analyzer of insurance market data.
The report takes a dive into how Florida found itself as the claims litigation capital of the nation, explores legislative and court-decision history that has seldom been explained, and looks at what has happened in the last three years to bring the state’s property insurance industry back from the brink.
“The impact of the reform is now being recognized by reinsurers, as the recent June 1 renewals brought the first significant rate decrease in several years. This will help continue to stabilize primary market rates or even decrease them moving forward,” notes the report, titled, “Florida Tort Reform: A Sunshine Success Story.”
The trouble began more than a century ago, the Gallagher authors said. While most states’ court systems expected each side in a lawsuit to pay their own attorney fees, Florida lawmakers in 1893 attempted to “level the playing field” in insurance disputes, requiring courts to award attorney fees to policyholders who succeed against their insurers — but not vice versa.