The International Insurance Society (IIS) has announced Denis Kessler, chairman and CEO of SCOR, as the 2014 Insurance Hall of Fame inductee.

The Insurance Hall of Fame award honors insurance leaders who have made a broad, encompassing and lasting contribution to the insurance industry and who are recognized by their peers as successful leaders, innovators and visionaries.

Five nominees were selected by the IIS Honors Committee, a body of senior insurance executives and academics, and voted on by the IIS membership by secret ballot tabulated and conducted by the independent auditing firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.

The Honors Committee also selected Robert J. Kiln, former chairman of RJ Kiln & Co., to receive the award posthumously.

Kessler will be inducted at a gala awards dinner taking place in conjunction with the IIS 50th Annual Seminar in London June 22-25.

Kessler became chairman of SCOR in November 2002 and transformed a group on the verge of collapse into the fifth-largest global reinsurer in the world. The group now operates in more than 175 countries with a workforce made up of 50 different nationalities.

His contributions also encompass important academic works on savings and insurance while he was a university professor, including “Savings and Retirement” in 1982, “Savings and Development” in 1984 and “Modelling the Accumulation and Distribution of Wealth” in 1988. Kessler is a graduate of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC Paris), a holder of the agrégation in Economics and in Social Sciences, and holds a PhD in Economics.

Robert Kiln established himself as a pioneering figure in the insurance and reinsurance worlds during his almost 50 years in the Lloyd’s market. He had the vision to develop standard wordings for existing classes of business, helped create new covers for clients and also developed innovative approaches to underwriting that remain cornerstones of the market today.

A keen educator with a passion for imparting knowledge, Kiln was the author of two books on reinsurance—”Reinsurance in Practice” (1981) and “Reinsurance Underwriting” (1985)—that are acknowledged as essential reading for market practitioners today.

He also led the insurance and reinsurance community in some of its most awkward and sizable loss negotiations, always fighting for fair and swift payment of claims.

A hugely successful leader, Kiln, the managing agent he founded in 1962, is now one of the largest and most well respected in Lloyd’s, renowned for underwriting excellence, innovation and integrity.

Source: International Insurance Society