Howden Re has hired two senior executives from rival Guy Carpenter to spearhead a reinsurance expansion across Latin America and the Caribbean, a region where rapid premium growth has yet to close a vast protection gap that leaves the bulk of catastrophe losses uninsured.
Carlos Garcia, who joins as managing director, brings 22 years of experience in retail insurance and reinsurance. He spent four years at Marsh before moving to Guy Carpenter in 2008, where he developed solutions for clients in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and wider Latin America.
Karina Lopez, appointed as director, spent 14 years in Guy Carpenter's Latin American and Caribbean treaty division building long-term client relationships. Both are expected to start in May and will be based in New Jersey.
The region they have been tasked with growing represents a significant commercial opportunity. McKinsey research shows Latin America's gross written premiums rose 11% annually from 2019 to 2024, making it one of the world's fastest-growing insurance markets, though it still accounts for just 3% of global volume.
OECD data puts insurance penetration at 3.2%, roughly half the average among its member countries. The protection gap is starker still. MAPFRE Economics estimates that 81% of climate-related disaster losses in the region go uninsured, while AM Best figures show just US$1.5 billion of the US$11.6 billion in natural catastrophe losses recorded in 2024 was covered.
April McLaughlin, head of Howden Miami, described Latin America as "a large, complex and underserved market where clients are increasingly looking for brokers with genuine local expertise and access to global capacity."
The experience Garcia and Lopez bring, she added, "further strengthens the proposition we are building" for clients across the region.
The appointments follow a reorganization at Howden earlier this month that created a unified Americas region under Mike Parrish, with Sonia Caamaño named CEO for Latin America and the Caribbean. The international growth markets unit Caamaño previously led delivered 16% average annual organic growth over three years, the firm said.
That both hires come from Guy Carpenter carries a longer backstory. In 2023, Howden settled a recruitment lawsuit brought by Guy Carpenter over the poaching of 38 staff, expressing regret over what it acknowledged were unlawful practices. The firm has continued to recruit from its rival since, including an APAC treaty hire last year.
Howden Re currently operates out of offices in Brazil, Miami, and Peru. Mario Baotic, head of international growth markets at Howden Re, said the region's "significant catastrophe exposure, a rapidly maturing insurance market and real appetite for specialist reinsurance solutions" underpinned the firm's ambition to become a preferred partner for cedents across the region.
Separately, Howden Re and Mitiga Solutions have extended their collaboration to assess volcanic risk in Spain's Canary Islands using Mitiga's proprietary volcanic catastrophe models.
The partnership falls under Howden Re and Howden Iberia's engagement with the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros, Spain's public insurance entity for extraordinary risks, to develop Probable Maximum Loss estimates across perils including flood, earthquake, storm, and volcanic eruption.
