About

Gracie Point's team has decades of experience in life insurance, premium finance, and structured finance that enable us to offer you access to a depth of expertise not available from other firms.

Chiahua Pan

Ms. Pan is the General Counsel of Gracie Point. Ms. Pan has provided legal advice to participants in the insurance industry for over 25 years, most recently as a partner in Insurance Services in the New York office of Morrison & Foerster LLP. She also served as special counsel in the insurance practice groups of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. In such roles, she represented all significant sectors of the insurance industry, in connection with innovative capital markets transactions, mergers and acquisitions and regulatory issues. She has a BA from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, MAs from Columbia University and Yale University, a JD from the University of California, Berkeley and an LLM in tax from New York University. She is currently the co-chair of the Insurance and Reinsurance Committee of the International Section of the New York State Bar Association.

Donald R. Boucher

Mr. Boucher is the Managing Partner and Chief Credit Officer of Gracie Point. Mr. Boucher is responsible for the overall management of Gracie Point, as well as Gracie Point’s credit evaluation and approval process. Before joining Gracie Point, Mr. Boucher spent 28 years in commercial banking in both credit and relationship management, most recently as Senior Vice President with Union Bank, San Francisco. He also spent several years with Wells Fargo, serving as Product Manager for Merchant Card Services and as Managing Director of Wells Fargo Asia Ltd. Hong Kong. Mr. Boucher holds a BA from Princeton University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Harish Raghavan

Mr. Raghavan is the Founder of Gracie Point Holdings, LLC. Prior to that, Mr. Raghavan served as Chairman of Concord Capital Management, LLC. Mr. Raghavan served as Global Head, Structured Products and Strategic Solutions Group for UBS’s Investment Bank, working with client coverage, trading, and product groups to create unique hybrid equity capital market products, and to implement proprietary trading strategies. He consummated several ground-breaking transactions, including the first rated bonds backed by life insurance and innovative contingent capital instruments. Prior to UBS, he served as Global Head, New Business / Product Development at Merrill Lynch & Co., where he worked for fifteen years and structured the first cross-border hybrid into the US capital markets as well as Trust Preferred Capital Securities. Mr. Raghavan received his MBA from Wharton Business School.

Harsh Varma

Mr. Varma is a Partner at Gracie Point. Mr. Varma is responsible for managing Gracie Point’s capital markets engagements. Mr. Varma joined Gracie Point with over 20 years of experience in capital markets and investment management. Prior to joining Gracie Point, Mr. Varma was a Managing Director at Imperial Capital, responsible for building principal investment business as well as heading European investment banking in London. Before that, Mr. Varma was a Partner at Pragati Fund, an Asia focused private equity fund, and also served as its Chief Investment Officer. Mr. Varma started his career in investment banking in New York at JP Morgan and subsequently moved to Europe to head CDO originating and EM structured lending for UBS, where he was also responsible for managing the UBS EM EMEA bad bank. Mr. Varma received his MBA from Columbia Business School.

Kevin Warner

Mr. Warner is the Head of Product Development and Origination of Gracie Point. Mr. Warner started his carrier in the life insurance industry, initially working for the Robert E Lee Group, a group general of agencies for life insurance, supporting the advanced case design of life sales. Mr. Warner then joined ING (now Voya) as the Director of International and Premium Finance Sales; part of his responsibility at ING was to build support for premium financing. Leaving ING, Mr. Warner joined InsCap, a boutique investment bank, where he was responsible for the analytics of the Insurance Linked Securities (“ILS”) investments that the firm was developing. With the support of InsCap, Mr. Warner joined SwissRe to develop SwissRe’s ILS investments in Mortality/Longevity. After SwissRe, Mr. Warner was part of a small team at Apollo Global Management where he built, fundraised for and managed three funds that invested in longevity and ILS assets.

Larry Ikard

Mr. Ikard is a founding Partner of Gracie Point and the President of Gracie Point International, Limited (Cayman). Prior to joining Gracie Point, Mr. Ikard founded West Broad Capital, a specialty finance consulting company based in Greenwich, CT. He also served as a Managing Director at InsCap Management, a boutique investment bank, where he was responsible for running the fully-collateralized premium finance lending program. He also served as a due diligence analyst at Systematic Absolute Return (AG), a Zurich-based fund of hedge funds investment manager and allocator of capital to funds which focused on asset-based lending and asset-based investing strategies. Mr. Ikard began his career at Chase Manhattan Bank in 1998, after earning a BA from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the University of Edinburgh.

Robert Powell

Mr. Powell is the Vice Chairman of Gracie Point. Mr. Powell is engaged in the development and management of the firm's premium finance distribution and life insurance company partners. Prior to joining Gracie Point, Mr. Powell served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Concord Capital Management, LLC. He also served as Chief Distribution Officer for Highland Capital Brokerage / NFP for two years and as Head of Distribution for Jefferson Pilot Financial for eight years. Prior to Jefferson Pilot, Mr. Powell worked for over 25 years with MetLife, Inc., most recently as the President of the Life Brokerage unit. Mr. Powell received his B.S. in business from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He holds designations as both a Chartered Life Underwriter and a LIMRA Leadership Institute Fellow.

Edward P. Chen

Mr. Chen is the Assistant General Counsel of Gracie Point. Prior to joining Gracie Point, Mr. Chen was a Structured Capital Markets associate at Clifford Chance US LLP, representing initial purchasers and managers in connection with CLO debt offerings, asset-backed securities offerings and marketplace lending structured product offerings. At Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, he was an attorney with the litigation discovery team, working primarily on RMBS and CDO cases arising from the 2008 economic crisis. Mr. Chen has experience working for the federal government, both at the Department of Justice as well as the Merit Systems Protection Board. He has a JD from Georgetown University, and a BA in Politics from New York University.

George Tagaris

Mr. Tagaris is a Vice President at Gracie Point and focuses primarily on capital markets and operations research. Prior to joining Gracie Point, Mr. Tagaris was the Director of Trade Execution and Research at Sunrise Brokers, LLC, where he oversaw a team of sales traders specializing in equity derivative products. There, Mr. Tagaris managed daily risks representing in excess of $500 million dollars. Before Sunrise Brokers, Mr. Tagaris acted as an advisor for The Permanent Mission of Greece to the United Nations, serving on The Economic and Financial Committee (Second Committee). There, his research focused on issues related to economic growth and development, including macroeconomic policy questions (specializing in international trade, international financial system, debt and commodities) and financing for development. Mr. Tagaris has a BA from Malone University, and an MA in Behavioral Science and Risk Analysis from New York University.

James "Rocky" Gandy

Mr. Gandy is working as a consultant for Gracie Point, engaged in domestic loan origination and Point of Sale. Mr. Gandy has 30 plus years of experience in providing financial solution implementation. Mr. Gandy has been an agent, agency manager, and Regional Sales Vice-President; most recently with ING Life Group. In the last 15 years, Mr. Gandy has assisted with the placement of over $1 billion of life insurance premiums, working with a broad range of agents, advisors, premium finance lenders, and insurance companies. In 2012, Mr. Gandy founded Post Oak Financial, LLC (Registered Investment Adviser, state of TX and LA) where he provides investment advisory services for individual and institutional investors. Mr. Gandy has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting and Business Administration from Northwestern State University.

Ladislaus Szele

Mr. Szele is the Acting Controller of Gracie Point. Mr. Szele has over 20 years of accounting experience in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. He has worked for Fortune 500 companies, and has experience working in the financial services industry. Mr. Szele received a B.S. in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds an MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, Bloomington and a dual MS degree in Global Supply Chain Management.

Nick Misra

Mr. Misra is the Director of Operations at Gracie Point, and has been with the company since its inception. Mr. Misra oversees Gracie Point's domestic portfolio, as well as the underwriting and originating of its loans. Prior to joining Gracie Point Mr. Misra was an analyst at Concord Capital Management, a specialty finance company, where he was responsible for the modeling and cash flow analysis of loans. He brings 10 years of insurance and premium finance experience to Gracie Point. Mr. Misra holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.