The departure of Brian Duperreault from Hamilton Insurance Group to US giant AIG will be a boost for both companies, Hamilton Re CEO Kathleen Reardon said yesterday.

Ms Reardon added that closer relationships between the two firms would lead to a business boost for Hamilton — and create a need for extra Bermuda talent at the firm.

She said: “It’s a great deal, not only financially, but strategically as well.”

As part of the deal that has seen Mr Duperreault cease to be chairman and CEO of Hamilton and become president and CEO of AIG, Attune, a technology-enabled company established with Two Sigma and AIG to use data science and analytics to transform the underwriting process, will “almost double in size”, Ms Reardon added.

While Hamilton’s US arm Hamilton USA will be acquired by AIG, Hamilton USA’s ownership in Attune will transfer to HIG.

Attune will expand its market to target a segment representing up to $150 billion in annual gross written premium.

Ms Reardon said: “Brian goes off to AIG with that same mindset and I’m sure he will do wonderful things at AIG and he has left us in a wonderful position.

“Brian is a talent magnet — we have attracted a lot of good people over the last three-and-a-half years.”

Ms Reardon said her own arm of the group “gets a reinsurance strategic partnership with AIG, which is a large buyer of reinsurance, one of the largest in our industry and that relationship is an open book”.

She added: “We’re going to see a lot of business flow from them.”

And Ms Reardon said: “As Hamilton Re grows, Attune grows, it means the Bermuda talent needs to grow and the number of people we need to attract increases.”

She added that AIG was now “trusting us to be their innovation and technology partner”.

And Ms Reardon said: “For us, we get to accelerate the vision that we built a couple of years ago.

“Now we have a trusted partner that is going to allow us to do that with them — the mission of the company is that we’re writing the future of risk. At Hamilton Re, our goal is to become a Tier 1 company.”

She added that HIG was set up on the premise that the industry had lagged behind others in the use of technology and data science — and closer links with AIG would speed the group along the high-tech highway.

Ms Reardon said: “It helps us accelerate getting that new kind of Tier 1 company that the industry needs.”

And she added: “I’m pretty excited and what’s great about the set-up of the arrangement is we still have an ally in Brian Duperreault at AIG.”

Ms Reardon said: “It’s very powerful for Bermuda as well — Brian is hugely committed to Bermuda, not only from a business standpoint but from a community standpoint.”