INNOVATIVE OPERATIONS TRACK: Solutions for the Property Insurance Crisis

Michael R. Smith

EVP, Specialty Lending, Alliant Insurance Services, Inc.

Mike Smith runs the Lender Services group within Lockton, a global insurance brokerage firm specializing in corporate insurance for real estate owners, developers, and lenders. His team specializes in analyzing loan portfolio risk, force-placed insurance, REO, and mortgage impairment insurance in addition to servicing both residential and commercial lenders on their corporate insurance needs. Mike started in the banking world with Bank of America and has worked with Lockton for 15 years. His team works closely with Lockton’s Global Real Estate Practice to bridge the communication gap between owners, lenders, and investors on insurance matters as it relates to commercial real estate transactions.

Ashwin Agarwal

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Advocate Technologies

Ashwin Agarwal is the CEO and Co-Founder of Advocate Technologies, a modern insurance consulting company leveraging world-class insurance consultants and technology to improve the insurance review process for commercial lenders. Ashwin has over 15 years of experience serving as a Board Member on insurance and reinsurance companies, as the lead insurance investor at a multi-billion private equity fund, and as a Mergers and acquisitions investment banker at Goldman Sachs. In his career, he has been a part of $10 billion+ of financing transactions as an investor. In these roles, Ashwin advised the CEOs of multi-national insurance companies on strategy, new product launches, and financings. At Advocate, Ashwin leads a team of 60+ insurance experts and technologists providing insurance reviews to lenders across pre-closings and servicing. His team oversees tens of thousands of loan reviews a year across commercial real estate including Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, HUD, CMBS, Construction, Bridge and other private lenders. He also directly oversees the product strategy and development of Advocate’s insurance compliance technology automation/AI platform which reduces loan time to close by 50% and improves the operational efficiency of reviews by 5x, delivering significantly lower insurance operational costs and high quality to lenders compared to legacy solutions.

Emily Rasmussen

President and Chief Operating Officer, Resilience Insurance Analytics

Emily Rasmussen serves as President and Chief Operating Officer of Resilience Insurance Analytics, an insurance consulting firm specializing in advising the nation’s top commercial lenders, investment banks, investment trusts, and issuers of private credit on most of the market’s largest and most complex transactions. With a view across 8,000 deals a year spanning the Agency, Private label CMBS, SASB, CLO, construction, bridge and balance sheet spaces, Rasmussen offers broad and dynamic insight into evolving insurance coverage expectations across market sectors, as well as the challenges borrowers face in meeting them, and the realistic availability and acceptability of proposed alternatives to legacy lender insurance requirements. As President and COO, she and her experienced team are responsible for interfacing directly with commercial lenders, GSEs, rating agencies, master and special servicers, commercial borrowers, and insurance brokers, playing the role of ambassador, educator, and facilitator to each, with the ultimate goal of maintaining risk averse credit underwriting for lender clients. Prior to joining Resilience, Ms. Rasmussen spent seven years as a Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer at Harbor Group Consulting. While there, she applied her years spent as a CMBS closer to hone the transaction management skills of the insurance focused review team. Ms. Rasmussen holds a BA from Michigan State University and a JD from Villanova University School of Law. She is a member of the CREFC Women’s Network, the Chief network for women executive leaders, and a recent addition to the ASTM property resilience standards working group.

Julie Serakos

Managing Director and Head of Model Product Management, Moody's RMS

Julie Serakos leads Moody’s RMS’s Model Product Management team overseeing the production of our global climate, earthquake, and emerging risk models. Julie has over 30 years in the insurance industry leading major broker catastrophe analytics teams for BMS Re US, Willis Re and E.W. Blanch Co. Julie volunteers with the International Society of Catastrophe Managers (ISCM) where she sits on the Executive Committee as its treasurer. Julie holds a Bachelor of Mathematics degree from the Institute of Technology at the University of Minnesota and a Certified Catastrophe Risk Management Professional (CCRMP) designation.