AIG said Thursday that Mr. Zaffino has handed off his role as head of the company’s core property-casualty insurance unit to David McElroy, currently president and chief executive of the North American operations of General Insurance. Mr. McElroy will join the AIG Executive Leadership Team, reporting to Mr. Zaffino.
Mr. Zaffino, 53 years old, took on the additional job of president of the global insurance conglomerate on Jan. 1, while continuing as chief executive of the General Insurance unit. He has led a turnaround of the long-underperforming unit. He also is AIG’s chief operating officer.
The General Insurance unit sells insurance to businesses globally, and is one of the nation’s biggest sellers of homeowner insurance and other coverage to affluent people.
Over the past year, the unit began posting improved results, after years of lagging behind peers in key profit metrics. Some problems stemmed from AIG’s near collapse in 2008 during the global financial crisis, prompting one of the U.S. government’s biggest bailout packages.
The aid was fully repaid by the end of 2012, partly through divestitures of roughly half its assets and expense cutting.
Technology upgrades are a priority of Mr. Zaffino as president, in a project dubbed AIG 200.
The executive moves are further signs that Mr. Zaffino is being prepped to succeed Mr. Duperreault, 73 years old. Mr. Duperreault, who had started his career at AIG and then left to run other industry firms, took the top job at AIG in May 2017. Mr. Duperreault hasn’t publicly disclosed any departure date, but most analysts and people who know him have expected his stay to last just several years.
Mr. Zaffino was one of Mr. Duperreault’s first recruits as AIG’s CEO. The pair worked closely together at another company, Marsh & McLennan Cos., where Mr. Duperreault was CEO from 2008 to 2012.
In a statement, Mr. Duperreault credited Mr. Zaffino for “his tremendous contributions to the turnaround” of the General Insurance unit, and said his leadership strengths would apply as he “pivots more fully to his enterprise-wide” roles as president and chief operating officer of AIG.
Mr. Duperreault’s team has hired dozens of experienced executives over the past three years, including Mr. McElroy. Before joining AIG in 2018, he held numerous senior insurance posts including at Arch Capital Group Ltd.