Allstate Promotes Three as President Retires -- WSJ

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (January 5, 2018).

Allstate Corp. promoted three executives Thursday ahead of the retirement of President Matt Winter.

Mr. Winter, 60 years old, is set to retire in late February after eight years at Allstate. It was a voluntary decision and not a surprise internally, according to Allstate Chairman and Chief Executive Tom Wilson.

"We've been working on this for awhile," Mr. Wilson said in an interview.

Allstate appointed Mario Rizzo, currently chief financial officer of the company's personal lines division, to be CFO of the entire company. The insurance company also named current Allstate CFO Steve Shebik vice chairman and appointed Glenn Shapiro president of the personal lines division.

Allstate's CEO, who is also 60 years old, said he has no plans to retire. 'What I said to the board is 'I have no intention in leaving at this point...and I'll keep working as long as you want me to keep working.'"

"Our business has got a lot of momentum coming out of 2017, and we're doing all this innovative and fun long-term stuff," he said.

Allstate has raised car-insurance prices in recent years to offset the cost of more auto accidents around the country. It has also invested in new technologies, such as using location data to assess how well its customers drive.

The company reported better-than-expected operating income of $587 million, or $1.60 a share, in the third quarter despite $861 million in catastrophe losses from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The company announced estimated October catastrophe losses of $516 million pretax, mostly due to wildfires in California.

--Allison Prang contributed to this article.

Write to Nicole Friedman at nicole.friedman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 05, 2018 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)