Insurance executive gives $1.5 million to UW-Madison

Gerald D. Stephens, CPCU, a 1955 graduate from UW–Madison with a major in insurance, will receive the 2003 Distinguished Alumni Award from the UW–Madison Risk Management and Insurance Program at the School of Business.

The presentation will be made at the annual Risk Management and Insurance Banquet on Thursday, April 24. The banquet will also mark the announcement of the establishment of the Gerald D. Stephens, CPCU, Chair and Program Fund in Risk Management and Insurance.

The endowment will be funded through a $1.5 million gift from Stephens. The professor who will hold the chair will be announced later. The School of Business worked together with the University of Wisconsin Foundation to make this gift possible.

Gerald D. Stephens is the founder, past president and CEO, and current chair of the board of RLI Corp., a New York Stock Exchange holding company based in Peoria, Ill. Subsidiary companies include the RLI Insurance Group. RLI is a multi-line property/casualty company writing a variety of niche coverages. At year end 2002, RLI Corp. had $1.7 billion in assets, wrote $707 million in gross premiums and had net operating earnings of $36 million for the year.

Before starting RLI in 1965, Stephens was a vice president at H. O. Stephens & Son, Co., a family-owned retail insurance agency. He served two years in the U.S. Army as a 1st Lieutenant in the infantry in Korea.

Stephens is a member of Lloyd’s of London and is past president of the National Society of Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriters. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the National Association of Independent Insurers. He serves on the executive committee of the American Institute of Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriters, and is chairman of the International Insurance Society Honors Committee.

Since 2002, Stephens has been on the Dean’s Advisory Board at the UW–Madison School of Business. He also teaches in the business school’s executive education program on insurance.

Stephens serves on the boards of several local organizations in Peoria: the advisory board of Bank One-Peoria, the Fayette Companies, the Creve Coeur Club, and is past president of the advisory board of St. Francis Medical Center. He is a past trustee, member of the executive committee, and vice chairman of Bradley University. At Bradley, his company endowed the Gerald D. Stephens Chair in Risk Management and Insurance.

He received his undergraduate degree in insurance from University of Wisconsin in 1955 and earned his CPCU (Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriter) designation in 1960. While at Wisconsin, he was president of the Insurance Society, the oldest university student organization in Risk and Insurance in the United States.

Stephens, a native of Peoria, and his wife Helen reside in Peoria and Savannah, Ga., and have four adult children, and seven grandchildren.