Brian Charles Duperreault (born May 8, 1947) is a Bermudian insurance executive.
Duperreault is executive chairman of Cedar Trace Limited, a Bermuda-based re/insurer underwriting property, casualty and specialty insurance. His career began in 1973 as an actuary at American International Group. He eventually headed all of AIG's international operations. He was regarded as a likely successor to CEO Hank Greenberg, but as Greenberg showed no signs of retiring Duperreault left AIG in 1994 to head ACE Limited, a boutique specialty-insurance company based in Bermuda. During his 10 years as chairman and CEO of ACE Limited, Duperreault transformed it into global multi-line insurance and reinsurance powerhouse.
After retiring in 2006, upon request Duperreault came out of retirement in January 2008 to turn around the ailing Marsh & McLennan Companies, which was still suffering after a 2004 bid-rigging scandal that cost the company both hundreds of millions of dollars and also its reputation and morale. In his five years as president and CEO of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Duperreault returned it to profitability and growth, rebuilt morale and reputation, and revived the confidence of investors and clients.
Duperreault retired again on December 31, 2012, but soon became interested enough in cutting-edge data analytics to create an insurance company focused on advanced data science with the co-founders of the hedge fund Two Sigma Investments, a leader in quantitative analysis. The result was Hamilton Insurance Group, founded in Bermuda in December 2013 with Duperreault as CEO. He grew the company via acquisitions, including insurance and reinsurance, operations in the U.S., and a syndicate at Lloyd's of London. In late 2016, Hamilton Insurance Group also partnered with AIG and Two Sigma to create Attune, a data-enabled, algorithm-driven company that sells commercial insurance online to small and medium-sized businesses.
In 2017, AIG, still underperforming after its long saga following the 2008 financial crisis, called upon Duperreault to turn around the company following then-CEO Peter Hancock's March 2017 resignation. Duperreault was hired as CEO of AIG In May 2017. He began his tenure as CEO by immediately curtailing share buybacks and instead using capital for acquisitions. He installed a new team of top-tier senior management and 125 senior underwriters to execute his vision of tighter efficiencies and smarter risk-taking. He also eliminated AIG's prior separation into commercial and consumer businesses, instead restructuring the company into three new units: General Insurance, Life and Retirement, and a stand-alone technology unit called Blackboard Insurance which had been Hamilton's U.S. division acquired by AIG upon his hiring.
He stepped down as executive chairman of AIG in December 2021.
Early life and education Duperreault was born in Paget, Bermuda in 1947. His parents had separated before he was born, and in order to be near her closest friend, his mother had moved to Bermuda. A Catholic single mother, after his birth she moved with her 5-month-old son to Trenton, New Jersey where her sister lived, and worked as an accountant. Duperreault was educated at Catholic schools, graduating in 1965 from St. Anthony High School, since renamed Trenton Catholic Academy.O'Connor, Rose. "Iron Mike Gala celebrates Trenton Catholic Academy's 50 years of mission", The Monitor. Accessed July 8, 2019. "Brian Duperreault received the Monsignor McCorristin Mission Award. Duperreault, a member of the first graduating class of 1965, has served in a variety of leadership roles, including President and Chief Executive Officer of Marsh and McLennan Companies, Inc., a service firm specializing in the areas of risk, insurance, human capital and strategy."
He attended Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, where he received a B.S. in mathematics in 1969.
He began to pursue a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Maryland but was drafted in November 1969. After receiving a waiver to complete his first year of study there, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in May 1970 and spent three years at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Duperreault had originally thought of becoming a professor of mathematics but, newly married, he decided he wanted a better income than an academic life could provide. After he was discharged from the army, he researched job ideas at a library, where he learned about the actuary profession.
Career AIG 1973–1994 At the age of 26 in 1973, shortly after completing his military service, Duperreault was hired at AIG as an actuary. AIG at the time was a midsize property-casualty insurer, and was in the early stages of its transformation by CEO Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg into one of the world's largest financial services firms.
Duperreault rose steadily through several leadership positions. He was chief actuary from 1978 to 1981, senior vice president of AIG subsidiary American Home Assurance from 1981 through 1988, and chief casualty officer from 1985 through 1987. He became one of AIG's most senior executives. From 1989 until 1991 he was CEO of AIG affiliates in Japan and Korea. From 1991 to April 1994 he was president of American International Underwriters, AIG's overseas property-casualty insurance unit. In June 1993 while still president of American International Underwriters he was concurrently named to the additional position of executive vice president of AIG's Foreign General Insurance, and in April 1994 he was promoted from president to chairman and CEO of American International Underwriters; in these two positions he headed AIG's entire international operations.
He was long considered by industry colleagues and Wall Street analysts to be a potential successor to Greenberg, but Greenberg showed no signs of retiring, and after 21 years at AIG, Duperreault resigned in September 1994 to head ACE Limited, one of AIG's competitors.
ACE Limited In October 1994 Duperreault became the chairman, president, and CEO of ACE Limited, which at the time was a boutique specialty insurance company based in Bermuda with 50 employees. He greatly expanded and diversified the company, particularly via targeted acquisitions. He quickly added new lines of insurance, including satellite, financial lines, aviation, and excess property coverages. In 1996 he led the acquisitions of Tempest Re and Lloyd's managing agencies Methuen and Ockham. In 1997 ACE entered a joint venture to create Sovereign Risk Insurance, to provide political risk insurance around the world. In 1998 he led the acquisitions of Tarquin plc, CAT Limited, and Westchester Specialty Group. In 1999 he made ACE's largest and most significant acquisition, Insurance Company of North America, the global property and casualty insurance division of CIGNA, and ACE also acquired Capital Re Corporation. In 2001 Duperreault restructured ACE's operations into two main groups, ACE U.S and Bermuda, and ACE International, with each group headed by its own chief executive. In 2002 ACE partnered with and acquired the largest stake in Huatai Insurance Company of China, allowing both companies to jointly develop new products and services for delivery nationally in China.
Having transformed ACE from a niche boutique Bermuda-based insurer to a major global multi-line insurer and reinsurer with more than 9,000 employees operating in 50 countries, Duperreault resigned as CEO of the company in May 2004, having resigned as president in November 1999. He retained his position as chairman of the board, and his successor as president and CEO was Evan Greenberg, son of AIG CEO Hank Greenberg and one of Duppereault's protege's while he was at AIG; Duperreault had hired him away from AIG in 2001 to head Ace Tempest Re. Duperreault's leadership of ACE for 10 years has been credited as instrumental in transforming Bermuda from an island nation with a small, reinsurance-focused market into a global insurance center.
In September 2004, four months after he stepped down as CEO, the ACE Limited board of directors honored Duperreault by establishing and funding the Brian Duperreault Endowed Chair for Risk Management and Insurance at Duperreault's alma mater, Saint Joseph's University.
In May 2006 Duperreault retired, becoming non-executive chairman of ACE.
Marsh & McLennan Companies Two years after retiring in 2006, upon request Duperreault came out of retirement in January 2008 to be president and CEO of the New York-based global firm Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC), one of the world's two largest insurance brokerages, which had helped found ACE Limited in 1985 and which was one of AIG's broker partners. The company was in the midst of a serious crisis, suffering heavy outflows from a bid-rigging scandal in 2004 that cost an initial $850 million settlement in 2005, plus additional substantial annual costs and a prohibition on contingent commissions. Due to that 2004-2005 insurance probe by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, which alleged MMC had falsified and rigged bids on contracts and favored insurers at the expense of clients in return for higher commissions, the company had also sustained reputational and morale damage, lost business, and talent loss. Additional problems included excess capacity, lawsuits, organization issues, and very low brokerage margins, and shareholders were insisting that the company be broken up.
Duperreault immediately put into action an emergency turnaround program, announcing plans to divest underperforming assets and immediately lay off hundreds of employees in an effort to restore profitability. He also quickly built a strong new executive management team at the corporate and operating levels, implemented greater expense discipline across the company, and evaluated the overall business for fit and synergy.
In May 2008 he announced he would try to sell the risk-consulting and corporate-investigator firm Kroll Inc.'s government services business and also Kroll Factual Data, which provides services to mortgage lenders; he also announced that he would cut Kroll staff, and he moved Kroll's corporate advisory and restructuring business into a separate unit. After incrementally selling off some of Kroll's divisions over a two-year period, in 2010 he sold Kroll Inc. entirely.
In 2009 he led MMC to settle an investor lawsuit over the 2004 bid-rigging scandal without admitting or denying wrongdoing.
While continuing to reorganize and streamline MMC, Duperreault also acquired and integrated a number of smaller companies to grow the business. He also established Marsh & McLennan Agency, aimed at serving the insurance and advisory needs of smaller and emerging U.S. companies, and grew it substantially via acquisitions.
In 2011 he was named to the U.S. Treasury's inaugural Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance, and in 2012 he was named its first chairman.
After five years as president and CEO of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Duperreault retired on December 31, 2012. He had streamlined costs, the company, the workforce, and service delivery, returned MMC to profitability and growth, rebuilt morale and reputation, and revived the confidence of investors and clients. He had also established a long-term strategy as a foundation for continued success after his departure.
Hamilton Insurance Group In 2013 Duperreault became intrigued with the use of cutting-edge data analytics and data science in insurance, after meeting with co-founders of the hedge fund Two Sigma Investments, a leader in quantitative analysis. He came out of retirement a second time to co-found Hamilton Insurance Group in December 2013 with the principals of Two Sigma, and to be its CEO. The focus of Hamilton is applying advanced data analytics and cutting-edge data-science techniques to the property-casualty insurance industry, in order to determine which risks to take and at what price.