Headquarters:
1350 Broadway, Suite 1400, New York, NY 10018
Year founded:
2016
Number of employees:
1,200
Phone:
732 292 7325
Email:
tom.murphy@jencapgroup.com
Website:
jencapgroup.com
LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/company/jencap
“Every portfolio manager or advisor has fewer clients than the industry standard, so we can devote more time to each client and deliver a level of service and precision that is well above average”
David Poliquin,
BGY Wealth Management
Read on
Award Winner
JENCAP
John F. Jennings
Chief Executive Officer
Mark Maher
President
David Nielsen
Chief Operating Officer
Leadership
John F. Jennings is chief executive officer and one of the founding members of Jencap Group. Under his leadership, Jencap has grown from an idea to the fourth largest wholesaler in the country in less than six years. His strategic vision for Jencap guides the ongoing management of existing entities, along with all future M&A activity at the firm.
Jennings has more than 35 years of insurance industry experience, the past 30 of which have been focused exclusively on the wholesale distribution space. Prior to Jencap, he was CEO and a founding member of Wholesale Trading Co-Op Insurance, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Jencap. Other roles he has held in the insurance industry include president and CEO of Crump Insurance Services, and president of BISYS Commercial Insurance Services following its acquisition of Tri-City Brokerage, where he was also the president.
Chief Executive Officer
John F. Jennings
Mark Maher is president of Jencap Group. Under his leadership, he works with the Jencap management team to develop strategic plans, drive overall growth initiatives, manage carrier and broker relationships, and work with affiliate company leaders to achieve an effective cross-selling practice.
Most recently, he was chief operating officer of Jencap and president of its NIF Group division, a managing general agency and wholesale insurance brokerage where he served for over 30 years.
Maher began his insurance career in 1981 as a property facultative broker at Willcox Baringer, a subsidiary of Johnson and Higgins. Other roles he has held throughout his insurance industry tenure include property facultative underwriter at Kaler Carney and Liffler; underwriting manager for Allstate Insurance Company; assistant vice president at Delany Management for both facultative and treaty reinsurance, on and off the New York Insurance Exchange; and assistant vice president at Danmar Associates.
President
Mark Maher
Dave Nielsen serves as chief operating officer of Galway Specialty Wholesale, parent company to Jencap, with responsibility for enterprise-wide operational governance, operational performance, platform scalability, and infrastructure optimization. In this role, he helps drive the company’s strategic priorities, expand operating capacity, and position the organization for continued growth and execution. Prior to assuming his current role, he served as chief financial officer of Jencap.
Before joining Jencap, Nielsen was the CFO and a founding partner of Asset Growth Partners LLC, a boutique asset management firm. He also served as CFO of Community One Bancorp, a publicly traded Carlyle Group-owned community bank acquisition platform, where he led the company’s financial restructuring and acquisition activities.
Over a career spanning more than 30 years, Nielsen has built extensive leadership experience across the financial services industry. He previously served as chief operating officer of Wells Fargo/Wachovia’s Global Markets & Investment Bank, where he managed the operating infrastructure and led the integration of Wachovia’s wholesale businesses into Wells Fargo following the merger.
Chief Operating Officer
David Nielsen
SPECIAL REPORT
Home
Bio
John LaCava
President of Programs
John LaCava is president of Jencap Programs, where he is responsible for the disciplined growth, profitability, and governance of Jencap’s expanding program portfolio. In this role, he provides strategic leadership focused on scaling the business while maintaining underwriting excellence, operational rigor, and strong program oversight.
LaCava has been an insurance professional since 1985 and brings extensive underwriting, operational, technical, and executive leadership experience to the organization. His corporate strategic planning and organizational leadership have been instrumental in executing agency acquisitions and expanding Jencap program administrators’ product portfolio.
Prior to co-founding Aran Insurance Services Group (now known as Jencap Program Administrators) in 2009, LaCava held various C-level positions throughout his career, most recently serving as chief operating officer of Jencap, along with executive vice president and director for QBE North America.
President of Programs
John LaCava
Tom Murphy
Chief Growth Officer of Programs
Tom Murphy is a seasoned insurance executive with more than 30 years of experience in the excess and surplus (E&S) marketplace. As office president and chief growth officer of programs, he guides the strategic development and governance of Jencap’s program management platform, helping drive growth, operational excellence, and long-term profitability across the business.
A recognized leader in delegated binding authority, transactional brokerage, and program management, Murphy has spent much of his career building and leading high-performing teams while developing specialized insurance solutions for niche markets. Since 2006, he has successfully created, launched, and scaled numerous insurance programs, overseeing every stage of development, from data analysis and product design to form and rate development, carrier partnerships, and profitable long-term growth.
Murphy joined Quaker Special Risk in 1996 as an account executive and advanced through a series of leadership positions of increasing responsibility, including producer, assistant vice president, vice president, senior vice president, and executive vice president. Prior to entering the insurance industry, he worked in financial services with Legg Mason and Dean Witter.
Chief Growth Officer of Programs
Tom Murphy
Jencap’s dedicated programs division, Jencap Program Administrators, operates as a collective ecosystem of specialized programs, and the connections between its parts are what set it apart in the program space. Rather than running underwriting, claims, and actuarial work as separate functions, the full-service managing general agency and managing general underwriter has built a closed-loop feedback system that delivers real-time loss data back into pricing and underwriting decisions.
The firm’s unique approach removes the data-reconciliation drag that typically slows program business, and it gives carrier partners access to what the company describes as a living underwriting intelligence that improves risk selection over time. The structure also gives carrier partners direct access to specialized, niche program business without requiring them to build their own infrastructure to support it, with full transparency and data credibility positioned at every level of the relationship.
Jencap also works closely with retail brokers who bring industry knowledge and distribution but need an underwriting platform and carrier relationships to build a viable program around. The result is a partnership model designed to work for carriers, retailers, and insureds alike, replicated across a national footprint available in most states and select Canadian markets.
The same model has allowed Jencap to move decisively into underserved spaces that other markets avoid. Its programs division now spans 30+ programs across six program brands, offering admitted and non-admitted offerings in property and casualty and accident and health markets solutions. Jencap built its EIFS Contractors Program, for instance, to serve exterior insulation and finish system applicators and installers who had almost no viable insurance options after most admitted and excess-and-surplus markets excluded the coverage outright. The program was purpose-built, with underwriting discipline, risk management, safety protocols, and loss mitigation integrated from day one.
Technology underpins much of this, and Jencap has built an integrated underwriting dashboard that combines risk scoring, third-party data, and institutional knowledge into a single view. The platform reduces the time a submission spends in queue and supports the online quoting tools its partners depend on in a competitive marketplace, but the company is deliberate about where the technology stops, treating its tools to sharpen underwriter judgment rather than replace it.
Alongside that platform investment, Jencap has made equally deliberate investments in people, one it ties directly to a shift it sees coming in the industry. The company points to a looming silver tsunami, with tens of thousands of experienced underwriters approaching retirement over the coming five years.
In response, Jencap has built a mentorship and career development culture across its programs division to transfer decades of underwriting experience to the next generation. That experience matters because it carries the contextual judgment no algorithm can replicate, which Jencap sees as the real driver of results for its carrier partners and insureds. It is why the company favors keeping teams in-office and office-adjacent, so institutional knowledge passes hands in person, an investment it expects to reward its programs division for decades to come.
“We excel at communicating complex strategies in a clear, transparent manner, empowering clients to make informed decisions while maintaining confidence in the discretionary process.”
David Poliquin,
BGY Wealth Management
Laurie Schoch
Senior VP, Property
Kiera Cope
Lead Actuary
Diana Criscione
Head of Operations
Sarah M Stewart
Associate Vice President,
Leasing and Call Centre Operations
Laurie Schoch is senior vice president of RPS Property Facilities, bringing more than 30 years of E&S and commercial property underwriting experience. Since joining RPS in 2025, she has overseen seven property programs and helped shape underwriting strategy for scalable, delegated authority solutions.
Schoch’s background includes leadership roles at Aspen Insurance Group, XL Insurance and Great American, with deep expertise in facultative placements, catastrophe-exposed risks, and technical underwriting. Known for her industry insight and collaborative approach, she is also passionate about mentoring emerging underwriters and developing solutions that meet evolving marketplace needs.
Senior VP, Property
Laurie Schoch
Kiera Cope is an accomplished insurance actuary and Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society, with 30 years of experience in property and casualty risk analysis, underwriting strategy, and actuarial disciplines. She built RPS’s actuarial team and processes to deliver enhanced insights that support profitable program growth, strategic decision-making, and stronger risk management outcomes.
Cope’s team supports existing programs and new expansions through deliverables including M&A due diligence, rate filings, profitability reviews, segmentation analyses, and underwriting tool enhancements. She also volunteers with the CAS Ratemaking Working Group, contributing to technical white papers on emerging and standard ratemaking topics.
Lead Actuary
Kiera Cope
Diana Criscione leads operational systems design and execution for nearly 50 RPS specialty insurance programs. With more than 25 years of experience across insurance operations, technology, and process improvement, she helps streamline workflows, strengthen underwriting practices, and support business growth.
Before joining RPS Programs, Criscione spent 14 years with Gallagher in program operations and business systems leadership roles and previously founded a database company serving clients across industries. She is also a dedicated mother of three and has served as a Girl Scout troop leader for 17 years.
Head of Operations
Diana Criscione
Sarah M Stewart has more than 15 years of strategic leasing and customer care experience in residential property management. She is responsible for overseeing all aspects of Centurion’s national leasing platforms, residential lead generation, and overall customer experience excellence through operation of the company’s internal customer service department.
Associate Vice President, Leasing and Call Centre Operations
Sarah M Stewart
Jencap Programs Contact