Stuart Brafman, president and chief operating officer of Amerin Corp., will retire at the end of the year, the company announced last week.
Gerald Friedman, chairman and chief executive of Amerin, a Chicago-based mortgage insurer, said the company's two executive vice presidents would split Mr. Brafman's duties.
This was the first public announcement regarding Mr. Brafman's intention to retire, but Mr. Friedman said he had known about it for some time.
Amerin won a major victory in August when the Department of Housing and Urban Development said it saw no problem with the concept of lender-paid mortgage insurance, a practice pioneered by Amerin.
Under such policies, lenders pay the premiums instead of borrowers and then charge the borrower slightly higher interest rates. The borrower gets the advantage of a tax deduction that would not be available with regular mortgage insurance.
Last week's announcement said Roy Kasmar had been named chief operating officer and will be in charge of risk management and administrative operations. Mr. Kasmar joined Amerin in May. He had been a managing director at Prudential Home Mortgage Inc. and left after Norwest Mortgage Inc. bought Prudential.
Jerome Selitto will handle marketing and sales. Mr. Selitto joined Amerin in 1992 after years as an investment banker.
Mr. Friedman said that he would assume the title of president for now. But he, along with Mr. Kasmar and Mr. Selitto, will form a new office of the chairman. Mr. Friedman said that because of these management changes, Mr. Kasmar and Mr. Selitto would now be involved in all policy decisions.
Mr. Brafman has been selling part of his stake in the company. Amerin went public last November and, according to filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he sold 255,000 shares in May and another 10,000 in August. At his first filing, Mr. Brafman said the sale was for "estate planning" purposes. He still owns 485,000 shares.
Mr. Brafman, 60, has been with Amerin since it was founded in 1992. Mr. Friedman hailed Mr. Brafman as a co-architect of the company who "led Amerin to achieve a lot of success in such a short period of time."
