Everest Re’s sidecar, Mt. Logan Re, appoints David Whiting as CUO

Bermuda based reinsurer Everest Re Group Ltd.’s collateralized reinsurance sidecar, Mt. Logan Re, Ltd., has announced the appointment of experienced industry executive David Whiting to the position of Chief Underwriting Officer, effective from Monday.

Rick Pagnani, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mt. Logan, commented on the appointment; “We are extremely pleased to have David join our team and assume this critical role as we continue to build out the Company. We are confident that he will significantly enhance the level of underwriting expertise that will be essential to Mt. Logan’s continued success.”

Mt. Logan Re is Everest Re’s special purpose reinsurance sidecar, established in January 2013 to give the reinsurer a vehicle for managing third-party capital to bring collateralized capacity to the property catastrophe reinsurance market. David Whiting will begin his new role as chief underwriting officer for the collateralized reinsurer on the 25th November.

David Whiting has 28 years of reinsurance underwriting experience, most recently holding a position at Torus Insurance (Bermuda). Prior to that Whiting held senior roles at leading insurers and reinsurers, including Swiss Re, Centre Re, Zurich Insurance Group and the Hartford Insurance Group. Whiting is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries, the Society of Property and Casualty Underwriters (CPCU), and the Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS). He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

Since its launch in January 2013, Mt. Logan Re has been raising capital from third-party investors for use in underwriting property catastrophe reinsurance. Mt. Logan Re had raised $91.3m by the end of September, still some way short of the $250m target it had set itself to raise by the end of this year.

During Everest Re’s recent third-quarter earnings call however, executives said that they expected Mt. Logan Re to meet its capital raising target by year-end. Dominic Adesso, President of Everest Re, said at the time; “While still relatively small, we are expecting the additional capital raise from Mt. Logan to meet, or possibly even exceed, our goal for the year-end.”

It is assumed that Mt. Logan Re will seek to deploy substantially all of the capital it has raised from third-party investors into fully-collateralized property catastrophe reinsurance contracts during the upcoming renewal period.