By Henry Gale

March 31 - (The Insurer) - Arbol has announced the hire of Nikhil Bhandiwad, who previously managed assets at Swiss Re, alongside four others as the firm expands its parametric weather insurance and derivative offerings for energy and agriculture markets.

Bhandiwad becomes director of battery and energy storage, where he will focus on developing climate risk management solutions related to the energy transition.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Bhandiwad was most recently a senior director at NextEra Energy, after working in insurance solutions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and spending nine years as a portfolio manager at Swiss Re.

Arbol has also hired Taimur Chaudhri, previously an underwriter at parametric specialist Kettle, as head of insurance sales. Ryan Chartier, who formerly led the agriculture vertical in the U.S. for broker USI Insurance Services, becomes Arbol's director of U.S. agriculture sales.

The company also announced the hires of Walker Brandt as business development representative supporting U.S. agriculture insurance sales and Arnav Tripathy as head of AI.

Arbol's latest hires come after Richard Coyle, former commercial director of FloodFlash, joined the firm's UK arm in January. Hector Ibarra and Kit Muir, who had previously led Arbol's UK operations, joined Tokio Marine HCC last year in a move first reported by Parametric Insurer.