Executive Team

Hemant Shah, President & Chief Executive Officer

Hemant Shah is President and CEO of Risk Management Solutions. Since co-founding RMS in 1989, Hemant has become widely recognized within the global insurance industry as a proactive and influential leader. Business Insurance recognized Hemant as one of “35 Rising Stars.” An Insurance Newscast survey identified Hemant to be amongst the “100 Insurance Industry Most Powerful – North America.” Global Reinsurance selected Hemant as one of the “Leaders of the Future” and one of the “Top 40 Most Influential People in Reinsurance.”

Hemant serves on the Board of Overseers of St. John’s School of Risk Management and Actuarial Science (College of Insurance), is a Director of the RAND Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, a Director on the Board of RAND’s Institute for Civil Justice, and a Director of the Singapore-based Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies. Hemant is a member of the Aspen Institute’s prestigious Henry Crown Fellowship Program, which seeks to develop our next generation of community-spirited leaders, providing them with the tools necessary to meet the challenges of corporate and civic leadership in the 21st century. He received a BS in Civil Engineering and an MS in Engineering Management from Stanford University.
 

Robert Bentley, Chief Operating Officer

Rob Bentley joined RMS as its Chief Operating Officer in May, 2007. In his role, Rob is responsible for all operational aspects of RMS and oversees RMS’ execution of a multi-market, multi-business, and multi-platform strategy. Rob is a highly effective leader with an execution mindset and a track record of driving world class performance in the insurance and reinsurance markets.

He began his career at Guy Carpenter & Company, LLC. in 1987 as a property broker. In 1993, he moved to Aon Re, a global reinsurance and insurance brokerage firm, where he managed a team of property brokers placing national account property risk, catastrophe, and retrocessional business. He returned to Guy Carpenter in 1996 as a founding member of the company’s property specialty division. In 2000, Rob assumed leadership of Guy Carpenter’s Instrat risk modeling operations. In 2002, he was chosen for the role of Western Region Manager, and then assumed the position of Global Chief Operating Officer in 2006. Rob holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He also attended the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford University.
 

Stephen Robertson, Chief Financial Officer & Group Executive, Enterprise Services

Steve Robertson is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and serves as a Director of RMS' Tokyo office. Prior to joining RMS in 2001, Mr. Robertson was CFO of COLO.com, and CFO of Insweb, the online insurance marketplace, where he helped raise significant private equity capital and managed the company's successful initial public offering. Before this, he spent a number of years in the insurance investment banking business, raising capital and executing mergers and acquisitions for Lehman Brothers, Salomon Smith Barney, and Alex. Brown & Sons. Mr. Robertson holds an AB from Princeton University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Robert Muir-Wood, Chief Research Officer

Robert Muir-Wood heads the research group within RMS, with the mission to design enhanced methodologies for natural catastrophe modeling, and develop models for new areas of risk, such as life and liability. He has more than 20 years of experience in developing probabilistic catastrophe models covering earthquake, tropical cyclone, windstorm, and flood for Europe, North America, Australia, and Japan. Robert has recently focused on new models for clustering, time varying activity rates, loss amplification and Super Cats. Author of six books, many scientific publications, and more than 150 articles, he has been the technical lead on a number of catastrophe risk securitization transactions, and is Lead Author on Insurance, Finance and Climate Change for the 2007 (4th) IPCC Assessment Report. He is also a member of the OECD High Level Advisory Board of the International Network on Financial Management of Large-Scale Catastrophes. 

Philippe Stephan, Chief Technology Officer

Philippe Stephan is the Chief Technology Officer of RMS. He was most recently Head of Business Development for Sophis, a leading market risk technology vendor. Prior to Sophis, Philippe directed product development as the CTO of San Francisco based Moody's KMV, the award winning credit risk analytics vendor. Philippe has also held senior management positions at Internet startups, built derivatives risk management systems for Societe Generale in Paris, and CA Lazard Financial Product Bank in London. Philippe started his career as a key contributor to the development of the Eiffel programming language in the early 1990s, after obtaining his MS in computer science from French Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de St Etienne.

Paul VanderMarck, Chief Products Officer

Paul VanderMarck is Chief Products Officer of RMS. In this role, he has overall responsibility for definition and execution of the firm’s product strategy. Since joining RMS in 1992, he has played a central role both in the development of RMS’ global catastrophe modeling capabilities as well as in advancing the state of practice for using modeling to manage catastrophe risk. In 2003, Paul was recognized by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute for his contributions to the field of earthquake risk mitigation and management with the Shah Family Innovation Award. Paul holds a BS in civil engineering and an MS in structural and earthquake engineering, both from Stanford University.

Peter Nakada, Managing Director, RiskMarkets

Peter Nakada is Managing Director of the RMS RiskMarkets group. In this role, he leads the branch of RMS that provides management consulting and other bespoke services to insurers and reinsurers. He advises companies on innovative ways to transfer risk to the capital markets, such as catastrophe bonds, and offers consulting solutions for understanding new types of risk. Prior to joining RMS, Peter was a co-founder of ERisk, a firm that provided risk and capital management software and consulting to the banking industry. Before that, he was a partner in Oliver, Wyman & Company’s risk management practice. Peter has a BA in engineering sciences from Harvard College, an MS in engineering management from Stanford University, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst charterholder.

Matthew Grant, Global Executive, Client Development

Matthew Grant is Global Executive, Client Development. In this role he is responsible for all RMS client-facing activities including support and consulting activities. He was previously in charge of RMS’ international businesses, having founded the RMS European office in 1996, and has been a leading advocate for the use of catastrophe modeling and risk assessment within the insurance and reinsurance markets since 1992. Prior to joining RMS, Matthew was involved in risk assessment and emergency planning for the nuclear, chemical, and offshore industries. He has a degree in mechanical engineering.

Ajay Lavakare, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Data Solutions, and Chairman, RMSI

Ajay Lavakare is the Senior Vice President and Managing Director of RMS’ Data Solutions business initiative. He is responsible for overseeing the development and delivery of a range of data products and services to help clients improve the quality of their exposure data. These include the launch of a data cleansing service, and the development of validation databases and data quality indices. Prior to joining RMS, Ajay was the founder and CEO of RMSI in India, established in 1992 as a joint venture with RMS, and now a fully-owned subsidiary. Ajay has an MS in structural engineering from Stanford University. 

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