Our team

In 2016, he joined Endurance, later acquired by Sompo International, where he spent six years as Co-Leader of Global Insurance and CEO of Global Risk Solutions. He built the operation from the ground up, offering multi-line underwriting across key sectors including real estate, hospitality, financial institutions, life sciences, technology, and professional services. Under his leadership, Sompo’s Global Risk Solutions grew from a startup to $1.4 billion in gross written premiums in just six years.

In 2022, Michael became CEO of Corporate Risk and Broking (CRB) for WTW North America, leading 4,000 employees across 63 offices in the U.S., Canada, and Bermuda. During his tenure, he drove top-quartile financial performance, improved profit margins, launched 12 client-focused industry verticals, and introduced six innovative alternative businesses, including Verita, WTW’s first-ever Managing General Underwriter (MGU).

In 2025, Michael founded Verist LLC, where he serves as CEO. Verist, a Managing General Underwriter majority-owned by United Risk Group, is an independent global insurance underwriting and distribution platform, with 29 specialized MGA and MGU programs across more than 30 global offices.

Before this, Mr. Chiang spent five years at QBE as national Primary Casualty Risk Management Leader, successfully assembling a team handling niche accounts in the middle market and large account space. Edward was part of the QBE Risk Management leadership team and was instrumental in turning QBE’s regional capabilities into a national structure by enhancing underwriting processes/guidelines, as well as servicing, billing, claims handling and loss control capabilities.

Prior to this, Mr. Chiang spent five years at ACE as Head Pricing Actuary of the ACE Financial Solutions group, where he was responsible for the pricing and reserving of large, sophisticated insurance programs. Mr. Chiang built new models and tools, and worked closely with underwriting, legal, accounting, claims and loss control to evaluate all risks. Before this, Mr. Chiang spent five years at Ernst & Young as a consultant working on Risk Adjusted Capital Modeling and Accounting Framework engagements for many global insurance carriers. Mr. Chiang is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society.

Email: echiang@veristinc.com

Prior to joining Verist LLC, Ionel Rizea was Chief Commercial Officer and Head of North American Regions for Willis Corporate Risk & Broking (CRB). His responsibilities included running the U.S. Field, Personal Lines across U.S. and Canada, Market Solutions Group, and Sales, Service and Strategy. Willis CRB North America business comprised more than 3,300 colleagues in 63 offices across the U.S., Canada and Bermuda and served over 70,000 clients in Large Accounts, Middle Market, Small Business and Personal Lines.

Previously, Ionel served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Sompo Global Risk Solutions (GRS), a global unit of Sompo International with over $1.4B in gross written premium. At Sompo GRS, Ionel led a number of units including business development, operations, risk control, strategy and planning and was a critical member of the executive leadership team and managed operations across the United States, Mexico, UK, Continental Europe and Singapore. Ionel was also a Board Member of Sompo Seguros, Sompo’s Mexico affiliate. Prior to Sompo, Ionel held the role of COO of Chubb’s Real Estate and Hospitality Division and Risk Management Group for 10 years. Ionel started his career in personal insurance working as Underwriting, Sales, and Planning Manager at Geico over a 7-year span.

Ionel holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from St. John’s University and a Bachelor of Science degree from Long Island University.

Mr. Enriquez has over 30 years of insurance experience ranging from financial audit and credit analysis to underwriting and risk management. Prior to Sompo, Mr. Enriquez led and managed Chubb’s Risk Management Group and its portfolio of large and complex casualty insured clients; he also managed shared and layered property programs for Financial Institutions. He is also very familiar with property CAT insurance-linked securitizations (ILS) such as catastrophe bonds and sidecar debt from years of working at A.M. Best Company where he evaluated several ILS and assigned the related debt instrument ratings.

Mr. Enriquez has a bachelor’s degree in business administration with major in accounting. He started his career with Ernst & Young International and KPMG where he practiced public accounting and held a Certified Public Accountant license.

Mr. Dockery began his career as an Executive Risk underwriter at Chubb and rose to become the home-office Real Estate Financial Lines Product Specialist. Mr. Dockery then moved over to the Property and Casualty underwriting ranks in 2008 where he became a technical specialist and territory manager for complex Real Estate and Hospitality placements.

In addition to the general Property and Casualty placements, Mr. Dockery also has significant experience in managing a host of alternative risk program structures including captive, integrated and corridor placements. Mr. Dockery also served as the Chief Credit Risk Officer at Sompo GRS and prior to that, was the lead credit analyst for the Real Estate Unit at Chubb. During his 20+ years career, Mr. Dockery has developed extensive deep technical expertise across a host of industries including but not limited to Real Estate, Hospitality, Leisure, Cultural Institutions, Financial Institutions, Professional Services, Life Sciences and Manufacturing.

Mr. Dockery graduated from The University of North Carolina at Wilmington in 2000 with a degree in Environmental Science and a minor in Public Policy.

Email: jdockery@veristinc.com

Kathleen has 30+ years of experience in various Casualty insurance, reinsurance, and broking positions and extensive experience innovating product, developing strategy, managing profitable portfolios and leading underwriting teams.
She joins Verist from Sompo, where she built a profitable Umbrella portfolio and forged strong client, broker, consultant and reinsurer relationships over the last eight years, as Senior Vice President and leader of its U.S. Umbrella/Excess Industry Practice Segment, specializing in Real Estate, Hospitality, Professional Services, and Financial Institutions. Kathleen was the leading Umbrella expert and her clients held board positions on Sompo’s exclusive Client Advisory Board.

Prior to Sompo, Kathleen was with QBE where she built a U.S. Large Account Excess Casualty Underwriting business from the ground up and led a team of underwriters, negotiated reinsurance and expanded relationships with the major brokers in the U.S.

Kathleen has extensive experience with start-up operations and has worked as a senior excess casualty underwriter in the Bermuda market, a treaty reinsurance broker in the U.S., Bermuda and London markets, and held positions as a facultative reinsurance and casualty insurance underwriter.

Education and Credentials
Kathleen has a Bachelor of Science degree from Plymouth State University.

As an integral part of her role, Ms. Shi collaborated with team players from underwriting, finance/accounting, claims and loss control. At Sompo, she managed the transaction pricing responsibilities and provided strategic support for profitable growth in its U.S., Europe, and Singapore business units.

Before joining Sompo International, Ms. Shi worked at Ernst & Young where she managed global teams of actuaries and served as the Reserving Actuary for various insurance company clients and insured clients with self-insured/self-administered insurance programs. Prior to Ernst & Young, she worked for a personal and homeowner’s insurance company based in Toronto and built the company’s pricing models and rating algorithms.

Ms. Shi holds a degree in Mathematics, with majors in Actuarial Science and Statistics, and became a fully credentialed actuary just two years after graduation. Through many years of comprehensive experience, education and acquired skills, Ms. Shi has become an expert actuarial professional in the field of pricing sophisticated and complex insurance programs, insurance portfolio profitability monitoring, and reserving adequacy.

Email: jshi@veristinc.com

He joined Verist from Sompo International where for over five years, he managed the company’s U.S. collateral holdings, group credit aggregation, bank ratings and credit methodology, aggregate exposure tracking, and day-to-day credit and collateral operations.

Mr. Ruane has over 15 years of insurance experience ranging from financial audit and credit analysis to risk management and reinsurance. Prior to joining Sompo, Mr. Ruane worked at A.M. Best, where he was responsible for the credit ratings of various Title and Captive re/insurance companies and Risk Retention Program insurance entities. Prior to A.M. Best, Mr. Ruane worked at Chubb Group of Insurance Companies (Chubb) where he managed the group’s Captive unit and its Bermuda Captive Facility used for the group’s complex casualty insured clients. When he started his career with Chubb, Mr. Ruane was responsible for the reinsurance accounting of the Excess of Loss and Clash reinsurance portfolios.

Mr. Ruane has a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a major in Finance. He also earned professional designations as Associate in Captive insurance (ACI) and Associate in Risk Management (ARM).

Email: sruane@veristinc.com

Ms. Panico was promoted into that role after serving as Vice President, Associate General Counsel for Global Reinsurance Operations at QBE Insurance. Before that, Ms. Panico was Vice President, Associate General Counsel in the Business Unit Support group at QBE North America. In that role, she served as the lead attorney for QBE’s Alternative Markets programs business unit, which was comprised of over forty property, casualty and specialty programs. She and her team provided day-to-day legal support for QBE’s programs, handled a wide range of contractual matters and oversaw programs-related regulatory inquiries, including market conduct exams and consumer complaints. Ms. Panico was also the lead counsel for QBE’s Global Risk Solutions in North America, which provides loss control and risk management services to QBE policyholders.

Prior to joining QBE, Ms. Panico was Counsel at AIG where she supported several of AIG’s Excess Casualty business units. Prior to joining AIG, she was an insurance coverage and defense litigator at Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti LLP in Morristown, New Jersey, where she was recognized by Super Lawyers as a Rising Star in New Jersey.

Ms. Panico graduated from Rutgers Law School (Newark) and with honors from Rutgers College. In 2019, she earned her Certified Program Leader designation from Target Markets Program Administrators Association. She is admitted to practice in New Jersey and New York.

Email: spanico@veristinc.com

At Sompo, Mr. Gonzales played a pivotal role in driving the company's growth and development especially in managing and overseeing a substantial book of property insurance business in both the Industry Practice and Asian/Japanese Interest divisions with a combined gross written premium of over $600 million. In addition to managing the overall profitability of the portfolio, Mr. Gonzales managed a team of 18 underwriters and oversaw the company’s strategy towards potential property exposure aggregation, property catastrophe modelling, and capacity/limits usage and deployment.

Prior to joining Sompo International, Mr. Gonzales served as Assistant Vice President and Property Team Lead at Chubb Group of Insurance Companies where he managed a team of underwriters in its Real Estate Unit. Through his experience at Chubb, Mr. Gonzales acquired a deep understanding of the complexities of the insurance market and its ever-evolving landscape and provided him with a strong foundation for leadership, strategic vision and reputation as a trusted and influential insurance executive. It was in this role where Mr. Gonzales started building and nurturing strong client partnerships which has been instrumental in fostering long-term success in his career and driving profitable revenue growth.

Mr. Gonzales graduated from Binghamton University with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration: Management Information Systems.

Email: sgonzales@veristinc.com

While at Sompo International and his prior roles, Mr. Tuohy worked closely with underwriting, loss control, operations, claims, product development and other insurance stakeholders in developing guidelines, workflows, and products necessary for commercial property and casualty insurance.

Before Sompo International, Mr. Tuohy was Vice President and Associate Counsel at Chubb from 2002 to 2016 in the General Counsel Department responsible for legal and regulatory issues for Chubb’s commercial insurance division. Prior to Chubb, he worked at AIG from 1999 to 2002 first as a Claims Analyst in the Toxic Tort Claims area, and thereafter, in the General Counsel Department for Large Accounts. Prior to working inhouse in insurance companies, Mr. Tuohy was in insurance defense litigation working as house counsel for CIGNA insurance at the law offices of Lee G. Karosen (1996 – 1998) and for a variety of insurance companies while at Morgan, Melhuish, Monaghan, Arvidson, Abrutyn & Lisowski (1998 – 1999).

Mr. Tuohy graduated cum laude from Seton Hall Law School in 1995 and is a member of the New Jersey and New York bars.

Email: rtuohy@veristinc.com

Mr. Bergen joined Verist from Sompo International where his position was SVP, Head of Client Management (Global Markets), based in London, UK. Mr. Bergen joined Sompo in 2017 and held various roles spanning across Underwriting, Business Development and Client Management. Throughout Mr. Bergen’s tenure at Sompo he was based initially in New York, NY, then Los Angeles, CA and most recently in London, UK in different leadership roles.

Mr. Bergen began his career in 2009 at a wholesale brokerage firm in greater New York, developing relationships with retail brokers across the United States. In 2012, he was hired by Marsh & McLennan (New York) as Vice President of Property Placement. In 2015 he was recruited to Starr Specialty (New York) as a Senior Property Underwriter where he was able to round out his insurance background more fully.

Mr. Bergen holds an undergraduate degree in History from Carleton University (Canada) and a master’s degree in Public Administration from Fairleigh Dickenson University (New Jersey, USA).

Email: abergen@veristinc.com

Jide began his career with Chubb Limited, holding a variety of underwriting field leadership roles specific to the life sciences industry, serving in the Southwest, Midwest and New England regions of the US. In those roles he was responsible for the profit, premium growth, technical development and people leadership for each region.

Over the course of his 21+ year career, Jide has successfully grown and managed global life sciences portfolios in excess of $250M+ USD; and publicly spoken on topics and authored white papers addressing the intersection of risk management and the medical device, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics with minors in Computer Sciences and Business from the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a member of good standing with the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.

Email: josifekun@veristinc.com