Swerling Milton Winnick today announced that Michelle Canniff, CPA has joined the company as head of Forensic Accounting. Canniff will lead the SMW teams focusing on commercial losses, business interruption, extra expense and time element claims.
“Having an executive of Michelle’s caliber and experience join SMW greatly enhances our leadership team. Her proven track record of success on the carrier side reflects her deep insurance industry expertise and gives her unique perspective to help our SMW clients,” said Diane Swerling, Vice President of SMW. “Michelle has a wide exposure to various industries, and has demonstrated success in providing timely, effective results to clients while maintaining strong relationships with all participants involved in the claims process.”
Canniff has more than 25 years of experience in the field of investigative and forensic accounting. Her expertise includes analyzing and measuring commercial insurance claims consisting of business interruption, extra expense, property damage, inventory, and fidelity losses from small to complex matters. She recently served as Vice President of Forensic Accounting at J.S. Held LLC, a global consulting firm providing specialized technical, scientific, financial, and advisory services. Before J.S. Held, she was part of a strong forensic accounting team at Magnan Graizzaro and Associates LLC, an accounting firm that provided insurance claims investigation, forensic accounting and investigation, litigation and dispute consulting, and expert testimony.
“I believe that to succeed in today’s public marketplace, public adjusters must develop relationships with all parties – everyone from the insurance broker, to the carrier, and of course the insured,” Canniff said. “SMW has been doing this for more than 100 years, and they do all aspects of public adjusting in-house without farming out parts of the claim, which to me is a key element in SMW’s ability to successfully handle any claim.”
“The SMW leadership team remains laser-focused on our mission to help every client obtain the best possible recovery for their claims, and building out a world-class forensic accounting team is central to those services,” said Paul Winnick, President of SMW. “Michelle is ideally suited to develop and execute our firm’s growth strategy by taking advantage of the unique market needs for forensic accounting in the public adjusting industry. We’re really excited to have her join our team.”
