AmTrust Title Insurance Co. named James Dufficy, a veteran of the industry with more than 22 years of title insurance experience, director of corporate strategy, agency vice president.
Based in Idaho, Dufficy’s immediate responsibilities will be to assist AmTrust Title President Jason Gordon to expand the company’s authority to write title insurance across the country and to broaden its agency operations nationwide with a regional focus on the western United States.
Prior to joining AmTrust Title, Dufficy was managing member of Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Retitle Holding Co., a limited liability company formed to make investments in real estate. Earlier he was president and general counsel for Irvine, Calif.-based National Title Insurance of New York, when as chief executive he expanded the company’s footprint from 25 to 48 states, overseeing profitable growth in premiums so that ultimately the company became the highest ranked regional title insurers in the country from 2011 to 2013. Before that, he served in executive positions for Stewart Lender Services in Houston, Texas and First American Title Insurance Co.’s operations in both Santa Ana, Calif., and Phoenix.
“James is a rare find, a seasoned title insurance professional with vast experience in the industry, gifted with the kind of personality required to passionately implement our corporate mandate: To establish, maintain and grow a title agency presence in every state in the union,” Gordon said. “He is excited by the challenge and we are thrilled to welcome aboard such an accomplished professional, with the legal expertise and business know-how to make AmTrust Title a household name in real estate circles in and around the West Coast.”
Prior to his title agency career, Dufficy served as an associate with Holland and Hart in the early 1980s, then Denver’s largest law firm. Before that, he was a special agent for the FBI in Tucson, Ariz., covering general criminal investigations, and later in New York where he was involved with counterintelligence investigations.