Hedge Funds Are Hunting for New Talent to Navigate Catastrophes

When Mitesh Parikh, a headhunter at UK recruiter Selby Jennings, started looking for an ILS modeler for a large US hedge fund this year, the pool of qualified candidates was disconcertingly small.

“It was a tough search,” says Parikh, who specializes in roles focused on risk.

ILS — which stands for insurance-linked securities — is “a relatively new and emerging area among hedge funds,” he said. “And they’re all looking for the same talent.”

Experts in ILS have traditionally focused on things like modeling the probability that a hurricane might hit an urban area, and how that would feed into ...