Swiss Re hires weather specialist for advisory team

Swiss Re has hired Brian O’Hearne as a managing director of North American environment and commodity markets within its capital management and advisory arm in New York.

O’Hearne, who is also president of the Weather Risk Management Association (WRMA), joins the reinsurer from GuaranteedWeather - a Kansas-based weather risk management specialist. He was previously GuaranteedWeather's chief executive and president.

O’Hearne will focus on weather and commodity trading at the Zurich-based company. In his new role, he will report to global head of environmental and commodity markets Juerg Trueb and Dan Ozizmir, group head of asset-backed securities (ABS), insurance-linked securities, and environmental and commodity markets.

In recent years, Swiss Re has been focusing on combining its reinsurance and capital markets operations to offset the risks on its balance sheet; earlier this week it transferred €252 million of credit insurance risk to the capital markets via the company’s first credit reinsurance securitisation.