Insurance Income Strategies CFO takes new position at FG Financial

FG Financial Group, the reinsurance and investment management holding company focused on opportunistic collateralised and loss capped reinsurance, has named a new chief financial officer (CFO).

Hassan Baqar, who has served as CFO of Insurance Income Strategies, the Bermuda-based reinsurance company, since 2017, will take up his post at FG Financial on August 6. He replaces John Hill, who has served as FG Financial’s CFO since the company was founded, who will retire on the same day.

Baqar joins FG Financial with over 20 years of experience in financial services, much of it spent in the reinsurance and special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) industries. He has served as the founder and managing member of Sequoia Financial, the financial services and advisory firm, since 2019, and has also served as director of GreenFirst Forest Products since 2019. He also served as CFO of GreenFirst from 2016 to 2020 and has been a director of Fundamental Global Reinsurance since June 2020.

Baqar was also recently CFO of FG New America Acquisition Corp, a SPAC that concluded a successful business combination with OppFi in July 2021. He currently serves as CFO of SPAC Aldel Financial.

Meanwhile, FG Financial has also appointed Brian Bottjer as chief accounting officer (CAO). Bottjer has been a senior vice president at FG Financial since 2014, before which he was controller at Biovest International.

Larry Swets, FG Financial’s chief executive officer, said: “Hassan brings a wealth of valuable knowledge to this role including extensive reinsurance and SPAC experience. I have worked with Hassan directly for many years and look forward to FG Financial benefiting from his broad experience and business acumen.”

He added: “We are also pleased to appoint Brian Bottjer to the position of CAO. Brian has been an integral member of the team since 2014, has deep knowledge of our business and finances and will play an important role at the company as we grow.”