“Buddy”
SVP Healthcare, RT Specialty
Chair, Financial Casualty & Surety, Inc.
After the sale of the assets of Myron Steves, a Texas General Partnership, on March 1, 2019, Buddy assumed the position of SVP Healthcare at RT Specialty. Previously, Buddy was Vice Chair of Myron Steves.
Buddy continues to be the President of Buddy Steves, Inc., a corporate partner of Financial, Casualty & Surety Insurance Agency (FSCIA), the entity formerly known as Myron Steves, and the Chair of Financial Casualty and Surety Inc. (FCS), a Texas domiciled property and casualty insurer domiciled in Texas.
In 1975, Buddy established Myron Steves Healthcare, a specialized healthcare liability practice that gained a national reputation as an intermediary in the placement and management of insurance programs in the healthcare industry. It was recognized as a defacto national healthcare practice for independent agents and brokers countrywide.
In 2004, Buddy and the Steves family interests, acquired Financial Casualty & Surety, Inc. to operate as a bail bond surety. Buddy has been the Board Chair since the acquisition. FCS is currently one of the country’s largest bail bond sureties operating in 33 states and underwriting over $2 billion in the total amount of bail liability. FCS is also one of the nation’s leading writers of immigration bonds. Under the leadership of one of Buddy’s partners in FCS Insurance Agency (the new name given to the general partnership whose assets were sold to RT Specialty), William M. Shields, FCS is modernized in operations, enhancing compliance in a regulated industry, and investing in technology to better serve its client.
The leadership of FCS also supports independent not for profit, tax exempt organizations that share our values and support real criminal justice reform, dramatic reductions in incarceration, and practical strategies to achieve racial and economic justice in our country.
Buddy is also a shareholder in Actuarial Research Group, a research-oriented actuarial consulting firm specializing in evaluating and benchmarking the loss expectations of medical and institutional healthcare providers formed in 1977.
Experience
Buddy joined Myron Steves in 1973 after working four years for an academic medical center in Philadelphia and finishing graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) in Risk and Insurance. In 1975, Buddy became a partner in Myron Steves.
In July 1975, Buddy expanded Myron Steves’ non-standard physician (1966) and miscellaneous medical liability operations to healthcare institutions, developing some of the country’s first liability programs written directly excess of self-insured retentions.
Buddy was actively involved as a consultant in the formation of the Illinois Provider Trust; a hospital-formed insuring organization formed in 1979 under Illinois Charitable and Religious Risk Pooling Act and remained its broker/consultant for 20 years. This pooled trust insured employed and contract physicians in a sub-trust.
In 1995, the physician program expanded to provide coverage for independent staff physicians using a Cayman captive, a domestic front and reinsurance.
In 1983, Buddy was instrumental in forming a primary risk bearing captive (Bermuda) for a large California-based healthcare system and remained its consultant/broker for 15 years.
In the 1986-87 period, Buddy helped create and/or reinsure a dozen single parent pass through captives in Vermont and the Caymans for healthcare systems.
In 1988, Buddy created a capacity excess reinsurance program for the California Hospital Insurance Company (CHIC), a newly formed Hawaiian-based RRG.
In 1989-90, Buddy helped form one of the nation’s first insurance programs for the independent medical staff of Memorial Health System (now Memorial Hermann Healthcare System). The program included an A+ rated commercial front, a reinsurer and the healthcare system’s Cayman captive.
In 1995, Buddy organized a national program to provide Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) wrap-around coverage for Community Health Centers. This facility currently insurers over 50 CHCs in 27 states.
Throughout the 1990s, alternative programs were developed for newly diversified healthcare systems covering employed and contract physicians as well as managed care organizations.
In 2003, in cooperation with the Mississippi Hospital Association, Mid-Continent General Agency, a part of Myron Steves Healthcare at the time, organized and managed HPIC, the Mississippi Hospital Association sponsored South Carolina reciprocal exchange that operates as a Risk Retention Group (RRG).
The global syndication operations of Myron Steves Healthcare, under Buddy’s direction, placed over $1 billion in premium between 1975 and 2005. Many of the ideas and concepts promoted by Buddy and his team of brokers, claim & risk management consultants and affiliated actuaries have become industry standards.
In 2005, Buddy and his team led the transition of the hospital and healthcare system book from occurrence to claims-made coverage. In 2008, the healthcare practice expanded into cyber insurance and in 2013 into coverage for Managed Care Organizations (MCO).
The Healthcare Specialization has continued in the last 15 years and is currently part of RT Specialty. Although several of the nation’s premier health systems continue to be clients, the mix of business has shifted to writing the business operations of physicians like locum tenens, telemedicine and miscellaneous malpractice as well as allied healthcare services and long-term care providers.
Becky Thomson, Myron Steves longtime Director of Healthcare, continues to manage the healthcare practice under RT Specialty.
Buddy has been a longtime advocate of tort reform going back to research and articles written in the 1970’s. Buddy was active in the successful tort reform efforts in 2003 directly and through support of TLR and TAPA. Support has been maintained throughout the years to preserve the benefits of tort reform for patients and providers.
Although a number of brokers, intermediaries and insurers supported TAPA in 2003 and for a few years thereafter, Buddy and his team have remained engaged continuously since the early years of the tort reform efforts in Texas.
Education
Buddy received a B.A. in history (Magna Cum Laude) from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, in 1967 and an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in Business and Applied Economics in 1969. He completed all requirements for Ph.D., other than his dissertation, at Penn by 1969.
His master’s thesis (1968) and doctoral research (1969-1973) were in the area of medical malpractice. He received his CPCU designation in 1972. Articles were published in the Duke Law Journal and the CPCU Annuals in the 1975-77 period. Buddy was an active member of the Risk Theory Seminar for 20 years, an academic organization where membership is achieved by being selected to present academic papers.
Charitable Boards
American Shakespeare Center – Board Member since 2019
Children at Risk - Board Member since 2008-2020, Chair Development Committee 2016-2020, Emeritus Board Member starting in 2021 and Development Committee Member
Equal Justice Now – Founding Board Member, 2019
Houston Swing Dance Society - Founding Member 1997, Board Chair & CEO since 2009
Karen Stokes Dance - Board Member since 2001
Old Braeswood Property Owner’s Association - Board Member 2008-2019
University of Fondwa, USA, Inc. - Board President since 2013
Business Activities
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - Member of the Civil Justice Task Force and the Criminal Justice Task Force 2012-2018
Texas Association of Business (TAB) - Board Member since 2012
Texas Alliance for Patient Access (TAPA) – Member since 2003, Board Member since 2012
Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) - Supporter since 2003
Charitable Organizations Supported (Out of 100 +)
American Civil Liberties Foundation
American Friends Service Committee
American Shakespeare Center
Amnesty International
Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
Brennan Center for Justice
Children at Risk
Doctors Without Borders
International Rescue Committee
Jewish Family Services
Houston Area Women’s Center
Human Rights Watch
NAACP
New American Economy
OXFAM America
Planned Parenthood
Southern Poverty Law Center
Southern Smoke
University of Fondwa, USA, Inc.
World Central Kitchen
Presentations
October 15, 2004 – American Society of Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) “Managing Employed Physician Liabilities”
October 1, 2004 Physician Recruiting Expo 2004 Malpractice: Myth, Reality and Impact on Recruiting Physicians”
April 24, 2004 House of Delegates, Med Chi (Maryland State Medical Society) “Understanding the Medical Liability Crisis”
April 23, 2004 - Professional Education Systems Institute (PESI), “Texas Healthcare Liability Before and After Tort Reform”
August 1986 – Program organizer and moderator of the American Risk and Insurance Association’s plenary session on Tort Reform.
Publications
Medical Professional Liability”, Professional Liability: Impact in the Eighties, Monograph Series, Society of CPCU 1983.
“Medical Malpractice - A Gathering Storm?”, The Weekly Underwriter, Annual Excess & Surplus Lines Issue, Vol. 221, No. 11, September 15, 1979.
“Will Recession Fuel New Medical Crisis?”, Professional Liability Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 3, June 1979.
“An Empirical Analysis of the Capacity Crisis in Medical Malpractice Insurance”, co-authored with Archer McWhorter, Jr. and Lee Fisher; Journal of Risk and Insurance, Volume XLVI, No. 1, March 1979 (pages 139-146).
“Medical Professional Liability Insurance, a chapter in Advanced Underwriting, a textbook published by Insurance Institute of America, Summer of 1978.
“A Proposal to Improve the Cost to Benefit Relationships in the Medical Professional Liability Insurance System”, Duke Law Journal, Vol. 1975, No. 6 (1975) pages 1305-33.
“Notes on the Malpractice Insurance Market”, CPCU Annals, Vol. 28, No.4 (1975), pages 224-235 (co-authored with Archer McWhorter, Jr.).
“Medical Malpractice in Perspective”, CPCU Annals, Vol. 28, No. 4 (1975), pages 209-223.