Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, a full-service, boutique investment bank and broker-dealer that specializes in the financial services sector announced the appointment of Richard Cagney as Managing Director, Insurance in the Equity Group last week.

He is based in the firm’s Chicago office.

Cagney joins KBW from Cagney Research Group, Inc., which he launched in 2007, bringing three decades of insurance industry expertise to institutional money managers investing in the insurance industry.

He served as Principal of the firm, overseeing the exchange of information among insurance professionals, as well as between insurance professionals and investors nationwide.

Earlier in his career, Cagney was managing director at Cochran Caronia Waller where he established the securities brokerage operation of the firm. Under his leadership, the unit became the top insurance-focused investment brokerage operation at that time.

He also established the North American Securities unit of Nesbitt Burns in Chicago when he served as its Managing Director and Head of Sales.

Cagney’s appointment of Mr. Cagney is the latest move KBW has made to strengthen its insurance practice, after hiring Ryan Krueger to lead its life insurance sector research and bringing on Meyer Shields and Vincent DeAugustino to head its property and casualty research effort in 2013.

“KBW is committed to expanding and honing our focus on insurance to meet increased investor demand for access to this sector,” said John P. Ragan, KBW Executive Vice President and Global Director of Equities, in a statement. “The KBW Insurance Index (KIX) is up nearly 84-percent in the past three years. We will continue to augment our efforts to provide our clients best-in-class resources in this space.”

KBW LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Stifel Financial Corp., operates in the U.S. and Europe through its broker dealer subsidiaries, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc. and Stifel Nicolaus Europe Limited, also trading as Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Europe.

Source: KBW