Kita hires Head of Insurance following oversubscribed £4m seed round

Kita has hired experienced global (re)insurance & climate risk executive, James Kench, as Head of Insurance. In this new role, James will work closely with the growing team to develop and scale new insurance products, build relationships with insurance partners and the carbon ecosystem, and optimise and expand Kita’s capacity and influence within the rapidly-expanding carbon market.

“We are thrilled that an insurance industry professional of James’ stature is on the Kita team. James will use his extensive insurance industry experience to accelerate Kita’s carbon insurance product development, thus helping greenlight more investment into high quality carbon removal projects.” – Natalia Dorfman, Kita CEO and co-founder

James joins Kita with over 14 years’ experience in global (re)insurance broking, climate risk and portfolio management from Marsh McLennan, Jardine Matheson and Mayer Brown, covering Europe, Asia and the Americas. James’ background spans (re)insurance, law, finance, accounting, biology/chemistry and insurance product development.

“I’ve always been a big fan of hyper-specialist insurtech MGAs for their agility, innovation and ability to build deep specialist knowledge in their respective niche. So, I’m extremely excited to join Lloyd’s coverholder, Kita, to help do just that in the fascinating and emerging climatetech realm of carbon insurance. I look forward to working closely with our broker and capacity partners and the broader carbon ecosystem as we de-risk and enable more carbon removal projects worldwide.” – James Kench, Head of Insurance, Kita

Kench’s appointment follows an extremely successful period for Kita which has seen the company secure a recent £4m seed round raise, led by Octopus Ventures, alongside existing investors Insurtech Gateway, Carbon13 and Climate VC, and new investors Chaucer Group and Hartree Partners. Kita has also been approved as a Lloyd’s of London coverholder and secured lead capacity from Chaucer Group, with follow capacity provided by Munich Re Syndicate and RenaissanceRe. In addition, Kita has been nominated by PDIE Group for the Earthshot Prize 2023 and been awarded grants from the European Space Agency and UK Research and Innovation.