2018 Outstanding CPA in Government Awards

The winners of the 2018 Outstanding CPA in Government Award were announced at the AICPA National Governmental Accounting and Auditing Update Conference in Washington, DC on August 13, 2018.

• AICPA Press Release
• Accounting Today

Deborah V. Loveless, Career Contribution Award

Deborah V. Loveless, CPA, CGFM, CGMA, is the Director of the Division of State Audit, which is part of the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office. The Division of State Audit is responsible for conducting the financial and performance audits of all state departments, agencies, and institutions. Deborah has been with State Audit since 1979. For the first twelve years, she worked in the Financial and Compliance section auditing state agencies and served as the audit manager for the state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and the Single Audit. In 1991, she assumed the duties of assistant director for the division’s Performance Audit section, which performs audits under the state’s Governmental Entity Review (Sunset) Law. She was appointed director of the division in January 2013.

Deborah received her bachelor’s degree in public administration in 1975 and her MBA in 1979 from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She is also a graduate of the Tennessee Government Executive Institute.

She serves as vice-chair of the National State Auditors Association’s Peer Review Committee and is a member of the Performance Audit Committee. She has served as a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant’s Committee on Government Performance and Accountability and has also served on the Institute's Direct Engagements Task Force for developing performance audit standards.

She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Tennessee Society of Certified Public Accountants, and the Association of Government Accountants (AGA). She previously served as a director and a treasurer for the Tennessee Chapter of American Society for Public Administration. In her more than thirty years as a member of AGA, she has held numerous appointed or elected offices at the chapter, regional, and national levels, including two appointments to the National Executive Committee as senior vice president. In January 2016, Deborah was appointed to the Government Accountability Office’s Advisory Council on Government Auditing Standards.

Deborah is known for being an excellent planner and list maker. Deborah and her husband, Mike, have one son, Matt (daughter-in-law, Kristi, and two grandchildren).

Kathy Belfi, Outstanding CPA in Government Impact Award – State Level

As the Director of Financial Regulation at the Connecticut Insurance Department, Kathy Belfi, CPA, is responsible for the oversight of the financial solvency of some of the most complex Property and Casualty, Life and Health insurers in the world.

Kathy’s division, the largest of the Insurance Department, also reviews and approves the formation and licensing of domestic insurers and certificates of authority for foreign insurers who want to do business in Connecticut. She leads a staff of CPAs, financial analysts, examiners both in-house and field, legal and other support professionals, whose work is a critical part of the Department’s consumer protection mission.

A 25-year veteran of the Department, Kathy has helped guide the division through a changing regulatory environment that now goes beyond a thorough review of the balance sheet. Group supervision, enterprise risk management, principle-based reserving are among the approaches state insurance regulators take when assessing the solvency of carriers, particularly large corporations with international reach.

The 2008 recession gave rise to many of the regulatory changes that state insurance departments have adopted. Connecticut’s Holding Company law, enacted in 2013, gives the Insurance Commissioner enhanced powers to regulate large Internationally Active Insurance Groups (IAIGs) through use of supervisory colleges. It gave the Insurance Department the ability to demand data from any entity that is part of the insurance holding company, no matter where that entity is located or incorporated, and whether the business is insurance or non-insurance. Shortly after the law was enacted, Kathy led her team to convene five supervisory colleges in a relatively short period of time – an unprecedented feat at the time. Kathy has often told the staff that coordinating a supervisory college is like “planning a wedding.” She oversees the complexities of lining up presentations, hotel bookings, catering, conversations with high level company executives across any number of times zones, not to mention language differences.

Along with being a chair of several working groups of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), Kathy is an active participant in over 20 NAIC working groups. Kathy has also established herself as a leader in six supervisory/US regional colleges and participates in numerous colleges.

Kathy was honored to be a co-recipient of the NAIC’s 2013 Robert Dineen Award.  This prestigious award was given to Kathy for her outstanding national leadership on critical group supervision and supervisory college issues. 

Kathy has also overseen the implementation of many regulatory efficiencies in the Financial Regulation Division. Her team is now using the audit industry tool called “TeamMate,” a software platform that allows for easy sharing of information within the Department. It has improved controls and drastically cut the amount of time spent filing, retrieving and storing documents. In addition, companies can now file electronically for most requests.

She has served in her current capacity for the past 14 years and prior to that was responsible for company licensing and financial analysis. She has also worked as a CPA for several years with a concentration in real estate and taxation. Kathy received her bachelor’s of science degree in accounting from Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, CT.