Our Team

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Lance Barton, President

Lance currently serves as President of National Risk Brokerage. In addition, he is a contracted Managing Director at Highland Capital, as well serving on Board's of current investment interests. Lance has been in the insurance and financial services industry for the last 26 years. During this time he acquired special expertise in building national wholesale distribution models, as well as regional retail sales organizations. His history of serving distribution partners that range from “top 10” consumer banks to investment firms, trust companies, insurance general agencies and insurance professionals puts him in an experienced orchestration position to bring scalable and unique value to many sectors of the insurance industry. He has served, or currently serves, on numerous field advisory boards for the largest insurance providers in the domestic marketplace, including Prudential, Transamerica, AIG, and New York Life. He is a graduate of Florida State University and currently sits on their FSU Foundation Board, as well as DSO’s supporting FSU athletics.

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Robert Cole, Executive Vice President

Robert has over twenty-five years of industry experience with leadership roles in all aspects of the financial institution insurance sector, from insurance carriers, financial institutions and insurance brokerage companies. During his time at Regions Financial, Robert was President of Regions Insurance Services. As part of this role he had full P/L responsibility for all bank predicated and mass distributed insurance products. In addition to his time at Regions Financial, Robert was with Assurant for over eleven years where he gained experience with all Assurant products offered to financial institutions, including specialty areas such as: operations and technical system design; filing rates with nearly all DOIs country wide for credit products; managing statistical modeling and analysis for their lender placed program; preparing Q&A notes for quarterly investor calls to prepare the CEO and senior management during the housing crisis. He was a longstanding Board Member of the ABIA and still actively partners with many industry trades in key emerging issues.

Robert is a subject matter expert for banks in the insurance sphere and works to provide actionable updates on legislative and regulatory areas as well as advocate on their behalf. In his current role he is responsible for leading and growing all facets of the National Risk Brokerage operation with a focus on Lender Placed brokerage services as well as revenue generating insurance offerings for financial institution customers. He currently serves on the board of the NFA (National Flood Association) and is a key partner with the Office of Insurance Advocacy which provides internal subject matter expertise inside of the ABA (American Bankers Association).

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Leila Taha, Vice President of Industry Relations

Leila Taha has 30 years of insurance industry experience across a range of disciplines including operations oversight, regulatory compliance, data management, sales and marketing, and product development, with particular focus on assisting private companies in administering federal and private flood insurance programs. Leila is also Executive Director of the National Flood Association (NFA) and has served on the NFA’s Board of Directors since 2003, including as President for five terms. She has supported NFA’s communications, conference planning, and educational efforts as well as facilitated collaborative efforts with FEMA and other affiliated trade organizations across the industry. Leila is regarded as a subject matter expert in flood insurance and regulatory flood hazard data and is often consulted for her insights. Leila is a licensed Property & Casualty insurance agent and holds the Associate in National Flood Insurance (ANFI) designation. She earned her degree from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a marketing certificate from Columbia University.

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Heath Portwood, Vice President of Operations

Heath has twenty-five plus years of experience inside the insurance industry with leadership expertise in insurance operations and compliance implementation. Heath oversees all day-to-day client support, dashboard reporting for business intelligence, Regulatory and Compliance changes, Systems development, Change Management, Client Audit Support, etc. In prior leadership roles, Heath led and facilitated various operational areas supporting a variety of products geared towards the financial institution space. The last seven of those years focused exclusively on lender place operations and system development. Heath has represented this area on compliance committees such as Dodd-Frank Legislation and Department of Justice regulation, as well as in product development.