Demex hires Nephila’s Matt Coleman as Chief Risk Officer

The Demex Group, a climate risk focused insurtech that aims to deliver climate-resilience through financial risk solutions on a global scale, has made a key hire, appointing Matt Coleman who most recently worked at Nephila Climate as its Chief Risk Officer.

Coleman worked as Director of Strategic Partnerships at Nephila Climate, the climate risk and weather trading focused unit of insurance-linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance fund manager Nephila Capital.

He now joins one of Nephila’s partners, The Demex Group, taking on a role that will see him leading risk transfer at the growing climate risk startup.

As Chief Risk Officer at Demex, Coleman will manage the firm’s economic valuations for clients and lead pricing for Demex’s climate risk solutions.

Coleman worked at Nephila for more than a decade and has significant experience in the transfer of catastrophe, weather and climate risk to capital markets investor funded sources of reinsurance risk capital.

Nephila is a key capacity provider to Demex, having worked with the startup since its inception.

In Coleman’s role at the firm he will have worked closely with and gained an acute understanding of the Demex operating model and proposition, so making the jump to work at the startup is not surprising.

Coleman’s expertise gained in his time working for the largest dedicated asset manager of third-party climate risk capital will be invaluable for Demex as it continues to grow.

Coleman will now lead risk transfer at Demex, working closely with the Product, Growth, and Operations teams to develop and refine its offerings for climate insurance and risk valuations for clients.

In addition, Coleman will take a lead role in structuring climate risk transfer arrangements and running the necessary pricing analytics.

“We’re thrilled that Matt is joining us. Matt comes to Demex from our risk carrier network where he helped scale a climate risk fund from $200m to $750m. In addition to spearheading new products, Matt’s expertise will help expand Demex’s risk capacity network to new carriers,” Demex CEO Bill Clark commented on the hire.

“I am incredibly excited to join the Demex team at a time when climate-exposed businesses are transitioning from disclosing their climate exposures to valuing and managing them,” Coleman added. “This presents a tremendous opportunity for Demex to leverage its technology to increase climate resilience across the global economy.”

Coleman’s background has seen him working on origination, underwriting, and portfolio management for climate risk transfer arrangements, while also having set up multiple partnerships with climate risk investors, intermediaries, and service providers.

At Nephila, Coleman worked with Demex to build out a capacity partnership for the climate risk product offerings that the startup had developed and that Nephila continues to underwrite at this time, such as this case we reported on recently.

Demex creates parametric climate risk transfer offerings, backed by technology and analytics, partnering them with capacity from traditional reinsurance and ILS market sources.