Matt is the newest member of Golden Times Insurance Company, joining in May of 2023 to serve as Vice President. With 10 years of experience in the risk transfer industry, he brings broad underwriting expertise, sound business judgment, and dependable leadership to the organization. Matt is dedicated to providing prudent risk management, fostering collaborative partnerships, and building trust-based relationships with multiple esteemed counterparties.

As Vice President, Matt is co-responsible for the daily operations of Golden Times Insurance Company, an 831b captive insurance organization established in 2019 to support TPAC’s mission. He works closely with co-Vice President Pat Woods to develop and implement strategic initiatives that promote revenue stability, commercial growth,regulatory compliance, and operational efficiency.

Matt holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at AustinCollege of Engineering(Class of 1990). As a practicing engineer for the past 34 years, Matt has worked in a variety of roles and industries. Previous engineering and management work experience includes developing low observable aircraft/weapons delivery platforms for the United States Department of Defense, which also required he be approved for a Top Secret/SAR security clearance. He has also served as Technical Director of Toyota’s Indy Car team, Head of Mechanical Design forthe Red Bull-Sauber Formula 1 team based in Hinwil, Switzerland and founded his own engineering consulting business supportingindustrial clients from the rail, aeronautical, and biomedical sectors in Switzerland.

Because of his extensive technical background, Matt was recruited into the finance sector in 2011 and intensively trained as an industrial property insurance underwriter and technical risk analyst. He developed a large and diverse book of European and American industrial property risks while working for 3 different industrial property risk carriersoperating from the Zurich financial district and the City of London. His broad palette of engineering and financial work experiences gathered over three decadesmake Matt a valuableresourceforGolden Times.

Outside of his insuranceendeavors, Mattis an avid sportsman and enjoys hiking through the mountains in summer and cross-country skiing in winter, and he practices Shaolin Kungfu.He is a self-taught amateur luthier who has built several violins, and he enjoys playingtraditional Irish folk music on the mandolin. Beginning in 2011, he embarked on an extensive program of online coursework to learn to harness neural networks in analyzing complex problems using machine learning, as well as to build computer vision systems trained for inferencing oncustom image sets. Matt is married to his wife Sandra, speaks fluent German, and is father to 4 children.  The Cranor family live together in their 320-year-old farmhouse nestled in the foothills of the Swiss Alps near the town of Appenzell.