The International Insurance Society (IIS) announced two insurance leaders as the 2009 winners of the Insurance Hall of Fame Award: Jack Byrne, USA, and Sir David Rowland, UK. They will be honored during the Monday night gala dinner at the 45th IIS Annual Seminar to be held at the Grand Hyatt Amman, Jordan, June 7-10, 2009.

In 1976, Byrne was recruited to be the chief executive of GEICO, which was on the brink of insolvency. Following that, in 1985, in partnership with Warren Buffett, he again made insurance industry history with the IPO of Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, the largest U.S. IPO in history at that time. Following the sale of Fireman's Fund to Allianz in 1991, Jack built the remaining holding company into what is today White Mountains Insurance Group.

Sir David Rowland was chairman of Lloyd's of London from 1993 to1997. As Lloyd's experienced financial losses in the 1990s, Sir David assessed and developed a solution and, for the first time in its history, permitted corporate and institutional investors to underwrite policies in a departure from the principle of unlimited liability. In 1996, Lloyd's created a reinsurer, Equitas, to assume all liabilities prior to 1993 and Lloyd's offered a complex financial reconstruction which was accepted by 95 percent of the Members, thereby achieving a settlement of litigation after a standoff and alleviating a substantial proportion of members' losses. Sir David retired at the end of 1997.