Novarica Hires Ex-Fireman’s Fund Exec

New York — The insurance analyst and consulting community continues to expand and contract as Novarica, the research and advisory services division of Novantas LLC that focuses on markets, operations, and technology for insurers and financial institutions, adds to its cache of experts.

Karlyn Carnahan, CPCU, will bring a combination of insurer, e-business, and technology infrastructure experience to Novarica’s advisory clients. She will join the company as a principal, reporting to insurance practice director Matthew Josefowicz, and will be located in the company’s San Francisco office.

Carnahan joins Novarica from Novato, Calif.-based Fireman’s Fund commercial lines’ division, where she served as VP of marketing, expanded online customer self-service capabilities, and took a leading position in formulating IT strategy. She also served as global industry manager for Sun Microsystems, Santa Clara, Calif., and SVP of product development for InsWeb, Gold River, Calif. Carnahan holds an MBA from Stanford Business School, and as stated above, a Certified Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation.

"In addition to expanding our presence to the West Coast, Carnahan brings our clients a wealth of experience in e-business, technology, and market strategy,” Josefowicz told Insurance Networking News. "We value her depth of underwriting processes, her work with IT start-up initiatives and her enterprise IT experience. It’s a good fit for us.”

Novarica has concentrated on “fit” for the past year. Building the insurance practice from its inception, Josefowicz, who joined Novantas from Boston-based Celent, also signed insurance technology core systems expert Chad Hersh, another Celent alum, who joined Novarica earlier this year.

Celent, which was acquired by Oliver Wyman in February, backfilled Hersh’s position in July with Mike Fitzgerald, previous VP of enterprise underwriting solutions for Zurich North America. Celent, meanwhile, has continued to build on its portfolio of offerings, including its Celent Model Carrier report, Deal Trends and others. Celent currently has several analysts in the , as well as a large global presence.

This year also saw analyst movement announcements from Tower Group, Needham, Mass., and Gartner, Stamford, Conn.

Josefowicz told INN that Novarica’s business model, which takes a step away from the typical subscription-based approach used by many research firms to offer a pay-for-services approach, has contributed to his company’s overall growth. “The traditional analyst firm’s business model has a lot of value to certain constituencies but is limited to others,” he says.

Other initiatives underway include the firm’s ACE (Average Customer Experience) vendor rankings, which Josefowicz hopes grows to 100 by 2009.

Sources: Novarica, INN archives

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