RMS founder Hemant Shah joins FortressFire’s Board
- June 23, 2025
- Posted by: Kassandra Jimenez-Sanchez
- Category: Insurance
FortressFire, a provider of wildfire analytics and property-specific wildfire risk management services, has announced the appointment of Hemant Shah as the company’s vice chairman of the board and senior advisor.
Shah, considered a pioneering figure in catastrophe modelling and climate risk analytics, is set to bring his innovative perspective to FortressFire’s board to address wildfires, one of the most challenging issues in the insurance sector today.
Shah is the founder and former CEO of catastrophe risk modeling company Risk Management Solutions (RMS), which was acquired by Moody’s Corporation in 2021.
He is currently the co-founder and executive chairman of Archipelago, a technology startup helping commercial property owners and their insurance brokers harness data to better manage risk.
“Hemant’s bold leadership fundamentally reshaped how our industry understands catastrophe risk,” said Michael Ashker, chairman and CEO of FortressFire. “His decision to join the board of FortressFire is a tremendous endorsement of our vision – and a clear signal that structure-level assessment and mitigation is the future of wildfire risk management. With Hemant’s guidance, we’ll continue to advance tools and strategies that don’t just model risk but eliminate it.”
Through his career Shah has leveraged his vision and leadership to elevate catastrophe modelling into a core function of modern insurance, helping insurers, reinsurers, governments and capital markets better understand and manage the financial impacts of natural disasters.
“Years of catastrophic wildfires have pushed segments of the property insurance market to the breaking point,” said Shah. “Unlike conventional cat models, FortressFire’s ignition-first, structure-specific approach is a breakthrough. By focusing on modelling action on the drivers of mitigation and resilience, FortressFire changes the paradigm to restore insurability in places others have abandoned.”
FortressFire’s AMP Platform offers a comprehensive solution for wildfire risk reduction, structure safeguarding, and re-establishing insurance access in high-risk zones.
It is able to achieve this by integrating advanced AI, physics-based fire behaviour modelling, and on-site mitigation services, benefiting property owners, insurers, and communities alike.
