Hall of Fame nod for AIG CEO

FRIDAY, JAN. 4: Robert Benmosche, president and CEO of AIG, has been elected to the the 2013 Insurance Hall of Fame becuase of the “astonishing turnaround” he has performed at the company over the past three years.

Mr. Benmosche will be inducted at the June 17 gala dinner in conjunction with the International Insurance Society’s 49th Annual Seminar at the Grand Hyatt in Seoul, Korea, June 16 to 20, 2013.

The Insurance Hall of Fame award honours insurance leaders who have made a broad, encompassing and lasting contribution to the insurance industry and who are recognized by their peers as successful leaders, innovators and visionaries.

A slate of five nominees for the Insurance Hall of Fame was selected by the IIS Honors Committee, a body of senior insurance executives and academics, and voted on by the IIS membership by secret ballot tabulated and conducted by Deloitte & Touche.

 Bernard Fink, IIS Honours Committe Chairman, said in a press release: “We cannot think of anyone who more fully embodies the criteria for the Insurance Hall of Fame Award than Mr. Benmosche.”

“AIG’s astonishing turnaround during Mr. Benmosche’s three year reign is nothing short of remarkable and further speaks to his outstanding management abilities evident throughout his extensive career in the industry”, adds Michael J. Morrissey, IIS president and CEO.

 IIS chairman Norman Sorensen said: “The entire insurance industry, and society as a whole, owes Mr Benmosche their immense gratitude for coming out of retirement to return AIG to profitability and into a fully privately owned enterprise once again”.

Mr Benmosche joined AIG as president and CEO in August 2009, coming out of retirement to lead AIG out of a deeply complex crisis that involved unprecedented involvement by the US government in a publicly traded company and widespread public anger over that support. 

He is credited as “the man who saved AIG” from financial collapse during the worldwide financial crisis that started in 2008, and returning AIG to financial stability and profitability. 

Importantly, AIG’s turnaround mitigated a global wave of repercussions that the failure of a company that size could have caused.  AIG’s potential demise threatened millions of businesses, families, and individuals around the world including the more than 85 million customers and 57,000 global employees whose financial security would have been jeopardized had the company collapsed.