CATCo hires Ron Collins from Aon Benfield as Director of Underwriting

CATCo Investment Management have added a new experienced hire to their team in the shape of a new Director of Underwriting. Ron Collins joins CATCo from Aon Benfield. He has 30 years of experience in reinsurance underwriting and broking with his most recent role as Senior Managing Director at Aon Benfield focusing on the development and execution of various collateralized reinsurance opportunities across property, marine, aviation and satellite classes of business.

Ron will report directly to Chief Exec Tony Belisle and indirectly to COO and CFO Jason Bibb. He will have shared responsibility for CATCo-Re Ltd’s underwriting functions with Graham Wood.

Tony Belisle, Chief Executive of CATCo Investment Management Ltd, said; “As a business, our objective at CATCo is to deliver distinctive and compelling investment products to our clients around the world. And we aim to offer these within a robustly-managed structure. To underline the importance of the underwriting approach in deploying our investment strategies, we have created a new position and recruited a highly experienced individual. Having previously been an underwriter and broker for large institutional companies, Ron brings a great breadth and depth of experience to this new role and will be a valuable addition to our team”

Jason Bibb, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of CATCo Investment Management Ltd, said; “We are delighted that Ron is joining CATCo given how highly regarded he is within the reinsurance industry. Ron’s proven expertise and strong skill-set complements our existing team and enhances our ability to deliver strong investment performance for our growing client base of investors and reinsurance counterparties.”

2012 is likely to be a year of consolidation for many of the collateralized players such as CATCo as they seek to maximise returns from the attractive premiums achieved in the January renewals. 2012 will be a particularly important year for collateralized retro given the high losses experienced in 2011, the rising premiums and the increasing interest in insurance-linked investing from the wider investment markets. It’s good to see CATCo building for the future rounds of renewals by expanding their underwriting experience at this time.