J. Bruce Cochrane Named Chair of Governing Committee, WCRIBMA

Bruce Cochrane has been named the Chair of the Governing Committee, Workers’ Compensation Rating & Inspection Bureau of Massachusetts (WCRIBMA) for a one-year term as an insurance carrier representative for Meadowbrook Insurance. Mr. Cochrane is the president and founder of Renaissance Alliance, a network of New England independent insurance agencies, insurers and service providers based in Wellesley.

This will be the fifth time that Mr. Cochrane has been appointed as Chair of the Governing Committee of the WCRIBMA

This latest appointment to the WCRIBMA Governing Committee marks Mr. Cochrane’s fifth term as Chair. He is the only Massachusetts insurance professional to have served as the Chair of the Governing Committee five different times and for two consecutive terms.

In addition, this latest appointment will complete Mr. Cochrane’s 26th year of service to the Bureau. For his first 17 years of service, Mr. Cochrane acted as the representative for the Massachusetts Association of Insurance Agents (MAIA). For the past nine years, he has continued his service to the WCRIBA as an insurance carrier representative for Meadowbrook Insurance.

During that time, Mr. Cochrane was heavily involved with the Commonwealth’s landmark Workers’ Compensation Reform Act of 1991, legislation which later served as a model for numerous reform legislation in other states in the nation. Many insurance professionals credit the 1991 Act for the dramatic rehabilitation of the Massachusetts workers’ compensation market. A market that has transformed itself from one of the nation’s “most crisis-ridden workers’ compensation systems in 1990 to becoming one of the most stable workers’ compensation markets in the country.” As a result of this transformation, workers’ compensation rates in MA are approximately 66% lower than they were in 1991.

In addition to his extensive work within the Massachusetts workers’ compensation market, Mr. Cochrane also has pioneered a number of innovation worker’s compensation products including the formation and management of successful self-insurance groups (SIGs) and captives.

More about the WCRIBMA….

The Workers’ Compensation Rating & Inspection Bureau of Massachusetts (WCRIBMA) is a private, non-profit unincorporated association of insurers licensed by the Massachusetts Division of Insurance to act as the rating organization for worker’s compensation insurance in Massachusetts. First begun in 1915, The Massachusetts Rating and Inspection, was established on July 14, 1915, four years after the enactment of the first Workers’ Compensation Law in Massachusetts and at the urging of the then Commissioner of Insurance. In 2015, it celebrated its centennial anniversary.