Kane announces senior promotion and three appointments in U.S.

Kane, the largest global independent insurance manager in the world and one of the leading providers of insurance-linked securities (ILS) and life, pensions and investment (LPI) administration services has announced a senior promotion and three new appointments within their U.S. operations. The new appointments are on the captive side of Kane’s business but the promotion also provides a new senior manager in the U.S. where they recently lost their managing director and head of ILS Liz Frederick.

First the promotion; Ann West has been promoted to Operations Director of Kane’s US captive management operations. In the new role, she will be responsible for overseeing the development and ongoing management of Kane’s US-domiciled captives and RRGs.

Ann has extensive experience across a wide variety of captive companies, including: single parent, group, special purpose, sponsored, association and industrial insured captives. With over 25 years of experience in the accounting and insurance industries, Ann’s expertise spans the registration process and compliance requirements of all 50 states, plus all aspects of the management of RRGs and other group captives.

Commenting on the promotion, Ann said; “This is a very exciting time for Kane’s captive management operations in the US. The team is growing rapidly and we are constantly pushing to enhance and expand our activities. I’m therefore thrilled to be taking on the role of Operations Director at this point.”

The first of the new appointments is Stephen Brown who joins Kane from JLT Towner as head of Vermont operations. Stephen has 12 years experience in captive management and public accounting in Vermont, previously with Beecher Carlson and Aon.

The two other new appointments are Miles Hopkins as senior account manager and Vivien Rothwell as account manager within the Kane USA team. Both have significant captive sector experience, with Miles coming from Johnson Lambert & Co, a leading public accounting firm in the captive sector, and Vivien coming from Alternative Risk Management in Guernsey.

Simon Hinshelwood, Group Chief Executive of Kane, said; “We see significant opportunities for growth in the US captive market, both from a geographical and business sector perspective. Ann’s promotion recognises the great work she has done to help build our operations in this region, and with the appointments of Steve, Miles and Vivien, we are ideally positioned to capitalise on the many opportunities we see.”

So with these new hires and the promotion Kane are increasing the depth of captive experience within their U.S. team and also adding senior management experience. We don’t yet know what is happening with their Head of ILS role that Liz Frederick held but assume that Kane are looking for a replacement to help them continue their work in the area of ILS and catastrophe bond SPV management and administration.