Headquarters:
2850 Golf Road, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008
Year founded:
1997
Number of employees:
3,000+
Phone:
866 595 8413
Email:
RPS.marcomm@rpsins.com
Website:
www.rpsins.com/programs
LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/company/risk-placement-services-inc
“RPS programs is built on a culture of expertise, responsiveness and partnership, and we work as an extension of our valued carrier partners”
Rick Cullen, RPS
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RPS
Kevin Doyle
Chief Executive Officer
Rick Cullen
President, Programs
Bradley York
Senior Vice President, Programs
Leadership
Kevin Doyle brings 15+ years of strategic planning, consistent delivery of business results, and employee engagement to his role as CEO of RPS. He joined RPS in 2018 as VP of the Western Region and Chicago. In 2021, he took over responsibility for the Chicago team, resulting in strong organic growth and successful execution of dominant priorities.
Doyle has deep expertise across a broad range of specialty businesses in the E&S sector, alternative risk, and programs space. He has championed several sales initiatives to drive growth and efficiencies via digital and data strategies, early talent development, and proprietary products.
Chief Executive Officer
Kevin Doyle
Rick Cullen joined RPS in mid-2025 to lead RPS Programs, bringing more than 30 years of underwriting experience and a strong carrier-side perspective to the organization. As a seasoned executive, he provides strategic leadership informed by a deep understanding of carrier relationships, underwriting discipline, and program growth and profitability.
Since joining RPS, Cullen has led efforts to bring nearly 50 existing and newly acquired niche programs under a more consistent underwriting framework, while aligning talent across the team to support future growth. He has also helped establish a new actuarial function, a more focused approach to claims handling, and a data-driven centralized operations framework, allowing for a more focused underwriting role for RPS program administrators.
Cullen believes strongly in RPS’s culture of collaboration, professional development, and industry engagement. He is committed to fostering growth across the team while giving back to the insurance industry and the broader community.
President, Programs
Rick Cullen
Bradley York has leadership across numerous verticals and industries with over 30 years of carrier experience in numerous disciplines and capacities. He joined RPS Programs in 2023 where he currently oversees and drives strategy for a number of MGA verticals generating over $400 million in premium, including social services, public entities, golf clubs, allied health, amateur sports, non-profits, public entity, among others, on behalf of Risk Placement Services as the SVP of RPS Programs.
Previously Bradley was President of Intact’s (formerly OneBeacon) public entity vertical and cross border brokerage divisions. He has leadership experience within Claims, Business Development, Marketing, and Underwriting among others. Bradley holds numerous designations as well as a BBA and MBA.
Senior Vice President, Programs
Bradley York
SPECIAL REPORT
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Bio
Patrick McCahill
Chief Underwriting Officer
Patrick McCahill serves as chief underwriting officer at RPS, where he oversees underwriting profitability, carrier alignment, and actuarial collaboration. During his career, McCahill has held multiple executive leadership roles, leading underwriting, product development, reinsurance, and P&L oversight across personal and commercial lines.
McCahill holds an MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill and a BS in Business & Economics from Lehigh University. He also served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps and deployed as a company commander to Iraq and Afghanistan in support of Marine Reconnaissance operations.
Chief Underwriting Officer
Patrick McCahill
Jennifer Fifer
Senior VP, Programs
Jennifer Fifer is senior vice president of programs at RPS, where she leads initiatives focused on delegated authority, program business, and commercial underwriting. With more than 25 years of insurance industry experience, she has extensive expertise in developing high-performing insurance programs, strengthening underwriting governance, and building long-term partnerships among carriers, MGAs, and distribution partners.
Fifer holds the CPCU and AIC professional designations and earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Away from the office, she enjoys spending time with her husband and their three sons. Their free time is often spent at football games, on the lake, or traveling together.
Senior VP, Programs
Jennifer Fifer
At RPS, program development follows a long view. The company’s dedicated programs division builds new business through a standardized process that looks three to 10 years ahead, pairing close market listening with in-house actuarial modeling to find where demand, underwriting discipline, and carrier appetite align.
The development function rests on three moving parts, each well-connected to the next:
Market research, both primary and secondary, tracks shifting conditions, needs, and trends across the specialty market.
Product strategy then turns those findings into go-to-market plans and program submissions, shaped alongside subject matter experts.
And finally, implementation through a dedicated project management team that coordinates RPS resources to bring each new solution to market.
The payoff shows up in the programs themselves, where RPS built a new Habitational program for complex exposures after its property underwriting team identified a market gap, validated the opportunity through in-house actuarial models, and secured carrier support. A similar reading of the market led it to expand the Crane and Scaffold program through a technology-forward capacity partner, broadening coverage classes to include steel erectors and multi-trade contractors, and adding flexibility on deductibles and self-insured retention options.
“RPS balances market listening with in-house development, which allows us to identify opportunities where market demand, underwriting discipline and carrier appetite align”
Rick Cullen, RPS
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
Sarah M Stewart
Associate Vice President,
Leasing and Call Centre Operations
Karen Bannister, CM
Vice President, Marketing
Dave Longbottom
Chief Technology Officer
Alex Ventura
Head of Marketing
Damian Palovick
Senior Vice President of Underwriting
AXA XL – Delegated Authority Programs, North America
Dr. Mary Lavoie
Head of Risk Management and Senior Vice President
AXA XL – Delegated Authority Programs, North America
Mark Bernacki
Chief Underwriting Officer
Ryan Armijo
Chief Operating Officer, Underwriting Division
Bob Petrilli
President, Underwriting Division
By its own account, RPS runs nearly 50 programs. Its most established programs, among them RPS Fleet Transportation, RPS Crane and Scaffold, RPS Golf & Country Club, National Hangar, and RPS Marine, operate in complex markets where specialized knowledge and consistency matter most.
Expertise and stability run through the platform, shaped in large part by the leaders steering it. Rick Cullen joined in mid-2025 to lead programs and has more than 30 years of underwriting experience and a carrier-side perspective. He has since brought the division’s existing and acquired niche programs under a more consistent underwriting framework, while establishing a new in-house actuarial function and a centralized, data-driven operations model. CEO Kevin Doyle brings deep expertise across the excess and surplus sector, alternative risk, and the programs space, and has championed the digital, data, and talent-development strategies behind the division’s growth.
Talent runs beneath all of it, and RPS calls its focus on recruiting, retaining, and developing people its most important strategy. The programs team added nearly 80 new members in the past year, some through acquisition, including program leaders, actuarial, operations, data science, finance, and marketing.
With that base in place, RPS Programs will keep optimizing established programs and launching new ones alongside existing and new capacity partners. Scalable tools such as PowerBI dashboards, AI-driven platforms, and third-party property modeling continue to sharpen consistency, speed, and decision-making, and in Fleet Transportation, telematics and inward-facing cameras already show that technology at work across the portfolio.