We’re looking to grow Phoenix sidecar, broaden its scope: William Ho, MS Amlin Asia Pacific
At MS Amlin, there is an ambition to grow and broaden the scope of the innovative Phoenix reinsurance sidecar series of deals, and William Ho, the CEO of MS Amlin Asia Pacific, told us about the opportunity this presents to investors.
The comments were made in our recent Artemis Live video interview with William Ho, in which he discusses the Phoenix sidecar series, a set of collateralized reinsurance transactions issued out of Singapore with a focus on delivering investors a return from a portfolio of diversifying risks from the Asia Pacific region.
The Phoenix sidecar is now a regularly featured structure in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, and over its history over $160 million has been raised, while the investors backing the sidecar have benefitted from an average return-on-capital of between 8% and 9%.
Ho and MS Amlin have an ambition to grow the structure, hence attracting additional investors to what is a relatively unique ILS investment opportunity, being Asian peril focused, is a priority.
He explained during the interview, “We are looking to continue growing Phoenix, each year we’ve moved on a little bit more. We want our current investors to continue supporting us, and we welcome having new conversations with some new investors that would like to know a bit more about it.”
Ho continued, “With the Phoenix strategy and and the offering that we’re giving from MS Amlin, through Phoenix, there are three things that I want to achieve in the next 12 to 18 months, in the short term.
“One, is to increase, scale and grow our investor base, through established ILS investors, and hopefully some more Asian based non-ILS investors too, and convert their intrigue into material interest.”
As additional capital can be attracted, Ho also said that a broader scope of risks and regions featured in the Phoenix sidecar could be on the cards, on which he said, “As the size increases, we would look to widen the scope and participation to ensure that our cedent client-base gets better access to our Phoenix capital.”
“Third, and probably most importantly, to continue that good chain of profitability for our investors, to ensure that they are investing and supporting a product that does work for them, both in the short-run and in the long-run,” he added.
During the video interview, Ho also explained that the Phoenix sidecar is seen as a kind of journey that the company is taking alongside investors in the structure.
“For our investors, we just need them to know we carefully select, underwrite and build a portfolio. It’s not just transacting risk and passing it through,” Ho said.
“We want the investors to understand what we’re trying to do and align with our interests. We will explore this region with them and the exciting part there is, the Asia markets, the different number of developing markets here, they’re forever evolving, they’ve changed a lot over the last 15 years and they will continue to change a lot over the next 15 years. As and when that evolution occurs and those changes occur, that needs further capacity.
“We want to be, front and foremost, to be first to be able to access that increased demand in reinsurance and be able to use both our capacity and our investors capacity to go offer the right solutions to the clients,” Ho said.
Learn more about the Phoenix sidecar series from MS Amlin Asia Pacific and the investment opportunity it presents by watching the full video interview with William Ho.
The full video interview is embedded below and can also be viewed, along with previous Artemis Live video interviews, on our dedicated video page.
You can also listen in audio to all of our interviews by subscribing to the Artemis Live podcast here.
All of our Artemis Live video interviews have a focus on reinsurance, ILS and the efficiency of risk transfer and can be accessed here.
