The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) has named Roy E. Wright as the successor to Julie Rochman, who is retiring from her current role as company President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the end of June 2018.
Wright is currently Deputy Associate Administrator for Insurance and Mitigation at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and is expected to work closely with Rochman in the coming weeks to ensure a smooth transition around April 25.
While at FEMA, Wright led the agency’s resilience, risk management, risk reduction, and flood insurance programs, and previously served as CEO for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), where he implemented the reinsurance and risk transfer plan that supported NFIP through 2017’s record-breaking storms.
Eric Nelson, IBHS Vice Chairman, said: “After conducting an exhaustive nationwide search, we are confident that Roy has the right blend of experience, vision, and leadership skills to accelerate IBHS’ progress toward tangibly reducing the terrible losses Mother Nature inflicts each year with wind, hail, wildfire and other perils.”
Wright will now be based at the IBHS Research Centre in Chester County, South Carolina, and will oversee IBHS’s non-profit objectives of researching and promoting effective strategies for protecting homes and businesses against natural hazards.
He commented: “IBHS has only begun to realize its full, incredible potential as an organization and dynamic force for positive change, and I am honored to take the helm. I look forward to working with IBHS members and the institute’s highly talented leadership team and staff.
“We will continue to prove the value of resilience and encourage home and business owners to take steps large or small to reduce disaster response and recovery expenditures. Whether those costs are borne by homeowners, business owners, insurers, or a government agency at some level, we all benefit by favorably bending the cost curve and keeping the fabric of lives, commerce and society intact.”
Craig Tillman, IBHS Board Chairman, added: “IBHS is a uniquely capable research organization and respected thought leader in the building science arena. Institute findings and guidance about how to better defend against severe weather are already increasing the resilience of the built environment.
“We are now focused on broadening the impact of IBHS work to benefit vulnerable communities across the nation. The members and directors of IBHS are fully committed to supporting Roy and the fantastic IBHS team as we execute on that vision.”
IBHS is an independent, non-profit, scientific research and communications organisation which is wholly supported by the property re/insurance industry.
Since 2007, under Rochman’s leadership, the organisation has substantially grown and re-oriented itself, focusing on identifying structural vulnerabilities like roofing systems, and on strengthening new and existing buildings.
Rochman also helped to establish IBHS’s research facility in South Carolina, which is used to simulate a variety of storms and hazardous weather conditions, and to test the strength and durability of residential and commercial building materials.
