Kettle, the reinsurance focused deep-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) insurtech, has made another key hire, taking Amit Shah from Ariel Re as its new Chief Distribution Officer.
Amit Shah has worked at Bermuda headquartered reinsurance firm Ariel Re for more than twelve years and has over twenty years of experience in the sector, covering primary reinsurance, retrocession, property catastrophe risks and actuarial analysis.
His career began at KPMG as an actuarial analyst in 2000, then moving to Swiss Re as a Senior Pricing Actuary where he spent four years, before joining reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter for a role focused on property retro in 2006 where he spent another three years.
At Ariel Re his most recent role was as Head of Specialty and we understand he’s had a significant retro focus there as well.
Co-Founder and CEO Andrew Engler commented on the hire, “Amit could not have chosen a better time to be joining Kettle. With the level of demand we are seeing coming into 1/1, Will and I are very grateful to have another executive join our ranks with the level of quantitative and technological skill Amit Shah has shown time and time again in his incredible career.”
Kettle aims to enhance the understanding of catastrophe and climate risks with its advanced technological approach to modelling risks, then establish mechanisms and structures to transfer risks to both traditional and capital market sources of reinsurance capacity.
Kettle received a license as an Innovative Agent in Bermuda earlier this year.
“I am excited to be joining such an entrepreneurial start up that is so aligned with the major issues confronting our industry. Kettle has successfully demonstrated the power of analytics, and when combined with its pool of talented professionals it can offer its risk partners the potential for compelling risk adjusted returns in a changing catastrophe risk landscape,” Shah said on his appointment.
Chief Underwriting Officer, William Haddrell, added, “I’m thrilled to have someone of Amit’s talent and vast experience join the Kettle team. His relationships and underwriting skills will enable Kettle to achieve its lofty goals. I am eagerly awaiting his arrival.”
“Bermuda has a deep reservoir of reinsurance talent and subsequently is the leading marketplace for catastrophe risk transfer. We’re thrilled that Amit shares our vision of a future where data science plays the leading role in recalibrating the industry view of climate change risk, therefore enabling us to help reduce its increasingly harmful impact on society,” Nigel Mortimer, Kettle’s Executive Chairman summed up.
Kettle aims to become an intelligent source of risk for providers of reinsurance capital and is agnostic to the source, following an MGA model and beginning with California wildfire risk.
You can read much more about the Kettle Re model and its ambitions in our earlier article here.
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