Rivals keep snagging former JLT staff after Marsh & McLennan buy

Personnel fallout from Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc.’s April purchase of Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group PLC continued this week as brokerage NFP Corp. announced the hire of another senior former JLT broker.

While former JLT brokers have moved to several different firms before and since the firm’s merger with Marsh & McLennan’s brokerage operations, rapidly growing brokerages NFP in New York and Newport Beach, California-based Alliant Insurance Services Inc. have picked up multiple brokers that previously worked at JLT.

Most recently, NFP earlier this week named Mark Flippen, previously a senior vice president at JLT Specialty USA, as a managing director in its financial institutions group.

The announcement comes after the appointment of Andrew Pelzer, formerly a vice president at JLT, who joined NFP’s M&A transaction lability practice group in New York as a senior vice president in June; Doug Turk, formerly JLT’s chief marketing officer, who joined NFP as regional managing director of property/casualty, West region in Pacific Palisades, California in June; and John McNally, who joined NFP’s M&A transaction risk practice in New York group as national practice leader in July.

In addition, according to her LinkedIn profile, Natasha Kiemnec, formerly a vice president at JLT, joined NFP as a senior vice president in the New York area in July. An NFP spokeswoman declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Marsh LLC, Marsh & McLennan’s retail brokerage unit, sued NFP shortly after the completion of the JLT deal for allegedly poaching 13 former JLT Specialty Insurance Services Inc. real estate employees including, Gary Pestana, previously an executive vice president at JLT and leader of its real estate practice group; Sarah Sherman, San Francisco-based senior vice president in its property/casualty practice group; Dustin Smith, Los Angeles-based senior vice president in its real estate practice group; and Ramy Morcos, Los Angeles-based vice president in its real estate practice group. A pre-motion conference in the case is scheduled for Oct. 3 in U.S. District Court in New York.

Former JLT brokers who have recently joined Alliant include Delmar, New York-based Justin Riccio, who joined as senior vice president in April; Kathryn Carroll, who joined as senior vice president of Alliant Americas in the greater New York City area in April; Carrie O’Neil, who joined as first vice president and director in June; Ryan Farnsworth, who joined as senior vice president and director – Crystal financial institutions, a New York division of Alliant, in June; and Dan Madej, who joined as senior vice president – practice director, public entity, analytics group in the Chicago area in July.

Alliant confirmed the appointments to Business Insurance.

Marsh declined to comment on the NFP and Alliant hirings.

Alliant and NFP have both grown rapidly over the past several years. Alliant is the 9th largest brokerage of U.S. business, according to Business Insurance’s latest ranking, posting 19.8% brokerage revenue growth last year, and NFP is the 13th largest, reporting 16.3% growth for 2018.