State’s insurance commissioner to resign

Kerr aims to get staff settled in new LR digs, then move on to private sector

The state’s insurance commissioner, Allen Kerr, said Wednesday that he is resigning, effective later this month.

He submitted a resignation letter dated Feb. 27 to Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who appointed him in January 2015.

“Serving as your Commissioner of Insurance has been the best job I have ever held,” Kerr wrote in his letter to the Republican governor. “I cannot begin to thank you for this amazing opportunity you have given me. However, I feel that my time as Commissioner has come to an end and I must resign, effective March 27, 2020.”

“Should you ever need my service elsewhere or at any time in the future, I would be honored to serve you and the people of Arkansas,” Kerr said in his letter. Kerr’s salary is $139,835 a year.

Kerr, who served in the state House of Representatives as a Little Rock Republican from 2009-15, said Wednesday in a telephone interview that he spoke Tuesday morning with Hutchinson.

“I want to leave on a high note,” Kerr said. “I have been here five years, and it’s time to move on. Nothing against transformation and the people over there.”

The Department of Insurance was melded into the newly created state Department of Commerce as part of Hutchinson’s reorganization of 42 executive branch departments into 15 agencies on July 1. Hutchinson appointed Arkansas Economic Development Commission Executive Director Mike Preston as the commerce department’s secretary.

Kerr has a mission before he leaves the department.

“I am going to get everyone out of here and settled in their new home” by mid-March in the Department of Commerce’s building in the Riverdale neighborhood in Little Rock, Kerr said.

After that, “I am going to go out in the private sector and find someone who needs my talent and needs help I can provide,” he said. He is 63 and has many years of insurance experience with a background in financial services.

“I really enjoyed the job, the finest group of people I have ever worked with,” Kerr said. “I am not mad at anybody. My wife and I thought it was time to move on to do something else.”

Hutchinson said Wednesday, “I am grateful for Allen Kerr’s service in my administration and for his work as Insurance Commissioner over the last five years.

“He made the Insurance Department more efficient and helped open the state to numerous new companies by showing that Arkansas is a great place to do business,” the governor said in a written statement. “I appreciate his leadership and support throughout our transformation efforts and I wish him well in his future endeavors.”

Kerr’s successor hasn’t been determined, said Hutchinson spokeswoman Katie Beck.

During the Joint Budget Committee’s first day of budget hearings, state Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Conway, on Wednesday expressed his concern about the potential for the departure of key officials in the bank, insurance, and securities departments that have been consolidated into the Department of Commerce.

“I will tell you I am in a position right now where I would be happy to file a bill in special language to completely remove all three of those departments and put them in the proper position they should be, so that we aren’t having to argue some of these points,” Rapert said. Rapert made no reference to Kerr in his comments.