Guy Carpenter appoints Awan as first International Cyber ILS Lead

Global reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter has strengthened its cyber reinsurance team and as part of that promoted Zain Awan to the newly created role of International Cyber ILS Lead.

The company said that Awan will be tasked with further strengthening Guy Carpenter’s analytical and transactional capabilities to support the growth of the cyber insurance-linked securities (ILS) sector.

In addition, Awan will work closely with the investment banking and ILS focused arm of the reinsurance broker GC Securities, partnering to structure and deliver cyber insurance-linked securities transactions.

Awan was most recently a Senior Vice President, Reinsurance Broker and Actuary, in Guy Carpenter’s London Cyber broking team.

He joined Guy Carpenter in 2021 and previously worked at cyber risk modeller CyberCube for almost two years, prior to which he worked at Willis Re for six years.

Another appointment of note for the ILS market is the hire earlier this year of Grace Seigle, who joined Guy Carpenter from Gallagher Re as a Cyber Broker based in New York.

Seigle is focusing on developing the cyber retrocession market, a key and currently still limited capacity source for the growing cyber reinsurance and ultimately cyber insurance space.

Seigle will with Guy Carpenter’s global client base, with a focus on sourcing capital for the underdeveloped cyber retrocession market, the company noted.

Both these hires speak to the developing cyber ILS market and the fact third-party capital sources are going to be critical to support the growth of cyber underwriting in general, with capacity still falling-short in many cases to meet the opportunity.

Guy Carpenter has also announced that Matthew McCabe has been hired as Managing Director of Cyber Broking, based in New York.

With a focus on reinsurance structure design, McCabe will also support Guy Carpenter clients using his experience in broking, cybersecurity and policy to tackle complex issues, such as cyber war and the role of the public sector in risk transfer.

Previously at Marsh as an SVP, he rejoins the Marsh McLennan group from his most recent role at Kivu Consulting, a cyber forensics company, where he was General Counsel and Risk Officer.

In addition, Souki Chahid has been hired to the role of Head of International Cyber Analytics, joining from CFC where she was Cyber Modeling Manager.

Chahid will manage Guy Carpenter’s cyber analytics suite, including modeling capabilities and proprietary cyber data, and partner closely with Jess Fung, Head of North America Cyber Analytics, and The Marsh McLennan Cyber Risk Analytics Center.

These appointments signal our continued investment in this critical space. They join a formidable team of cyber experts across the Company, who are helping organizations understand, quantify and manage cyber risk,” Erica Davis, Global Co-Head of Cyber, Guy Carpenter commented. “This demonstrates Guy Carpenter’s commitment to fostering innovation in the dynamic cyber (re)insurance arena, and building an experienced team ready to attract new capital, innovate new structures and advance the use of analytics in the sector.”

We are committed to delivering advancements in integrated analytics and broking that address our clients’ changing needs,” added Anthony Cordonnier, Global Co-Head of Cyber, Guy Carpenter. “Through these appointments, we will be better able to partner with our clients to identify portfolio growth opportunities, bring expertise to complex risk issues, and create a broad range of cyber risk transfer solutions for the global market. As the quality of data and the depth of cyber models improve, we will take our analytics and modeling capabilities to the next level to attract additional capacity into the space.”