President
Spectrum weather and specialty insurance
Specialty: Weather
Robert Holmes began his career as a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center, studying the weather of Antarctica. During his time there, he earned awards from the National Science Foundation and the US Navy and, in 1999, had an Antarctic geographical feature, Holmes Ridge, named in his honor by the United States Geological Survey.
After 10 years, Holmes left academia and joined a hedge-fund-owned weather derivatives trading business. In 2008, he created a weather insurance agency designed to facilitate the sale of weather-based policies. Three years later, he founded his own brokerage, Spectrum Weather and Specialty Insurance.
Since its inception, Spectrum has been all about customer service and creating innovative solutions to the issues that plague those with financial exposure to weather. “Leveraging my background as a meteorologist, along with my interpersonal relationship skills, I knew that the insureds in this market could be better served,” Holmes says.
