Brian Burke, JD, CLU

Brian Burke has been a corporate life insurance and benefit finance entrepreneur for the past 21 years, first as a founding member of Winklevoss Consultants Inc, a national leader in corporate owned life insurance programs, from 1987 to 1997 and as a Principal in Gunderson Group Inc since 1997.   Among its major activities, Gunderson Group acted as Managing Director for Clark Consulting from 1999 until 2004, developing COLI and BOLI transactions and consulting services for large corporate employers in the US.  From 1997 until 2005, Mr. Burke also was a consultant to the law firm Milbank, Tweed in NYC, developing a client practice centered on tax and financial strategies in the area of employee benefit finance and included audits of federal and state income and excise tax transcripts. 

From 2005 through early 2009, Mr. Burke consulted with Financial Solutions Partners, a BOLI structuring firm in NYC, acting as account executive primarily for its money center banking clients, where he assisted banks in the purchase and ongoing risk management of bank-owned life insurance, negotiating insurance contract provisions including pricing, risk transfer, and tax/legal indemnifications for BOLI placements involving separate account assets with stable value wrap. 

Mr. Burke’s background includes assisting insurance carriers’ and clients’ government relations staffs in discussions with federal and state officials, and drafting amendments to state insurance statutes.   

Mr. Burke began his career as an Advanced Underwriting Consultant at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New York, and spent a number of years with Johnson & Higgins as an employee benefits account executive.  He has a BA in Classics cum laude from Princeton University and a JD from the University of Connecticut School of Law.  He holds the Chartered Life Underwriter designation from the American College.  He is a member of the CT and NY Bar Associations.  He has served as a panelist at employee benefit forums and appeared as a commentator on Bloomberg television.