Swiss Re continually reviews how to expand institutional investor offering: ACP’s Minter
The strategy of the Alternative Capital Partners (ACP) division of global reinsurance giant Swiss Re remains unchanged, according to its new Head Chris Minter, who told us the company continually reviews how it can expand its offering for investors.
Speaking with Artemis around the 2024 Monte Carlo Reinsurance Rendez-vous event, Minter explained that Swiss Re Alternative Capital Partners is building out its depth of expertise and he believes the differentiation that partnering with one of the world’s largest reinsurance specialist offers is a unique opportunity.
Minter explained, “Swiss Re’s Alternative Capital Partners team has a growing number of experts across the market. Our team has people with deep experience in sponsoring ILS transactions, arranging ILS deals for clients and structuring and managing ILS investment products.
“We believe that our end-to-end expertise in the market, supported by Swiss Re’s underwriting know-how, already provides unique differentiation.”
Minter highlighted three further areas of differentiation he sees with Swiss Re’s approach to ILS investment management and its sidecar offering, that are proving attractive to institutional investors.
“Firstly, our partnership approach – i.e. “skin in the game” – provides strong alignment of interest across all our strategies open to third-party capital investors.
“Secondly, the access to Swiss Re’s global expertise, proprietary risk modelling tools and underwriting practices offer significant advantages. Clients benefit from risk analysis transparency, consistency in risk view and timely model updates following events, alongside new information as it becomes available,” Minter told Artemis.
Going on to highlight a third point of differentiation as being, “The product structures for our third-party capital investors. We deploy innovative features, such as the immediate deployment of investor capital and the mitigation of trapped capital.”
Those last two are features that resonate, as the scale of Swiss Re’s property catastrophe reinsurance portfolio and the way it can allow investors access to partner on it, mean efficient deployment of capital is possible with greater certainty on returns and importantly on the potential impacts from any major loss activity around the globe that occurs.
Looking ahead to where Swiss Re might see opportunities to expand this business, at the time the market is beginning to look to the end of year and 2025, Minter noted that the focus does not change.
“Our strategy remains unchanged: expanding our business through our ILS investment managers, ensuring that our clients can count on us as a structurer and arranger of ILS, and sharing the Swiss Re risk exposure alongside alternative capital,” Minter explained.
But he added that new opportunities are always looked at and being explored.
He said that, “We continually review how we can leverage Swiss Re’s strategies and capabilities to expand our offering to institutional investors and to meet investors’ evolving demands.”
Given Swiss Re’s scale in the reinsurance market, the company has significant optionality to explore new areas where investor capital can work in harmony with its own balance-sheet.
At the same time, Swiss Re’s business in structuring and arranging deals also remains a focus, helping clients access investors and institutional capital sources.
Minter said that, “Through the Swiss Re Capital Markets unit, we continue to deliver structuring expertise and placement excellence to our clients. As part of this, we seek to broaden the risks shared with investors.
“As an example: at the end of last year, Swiss Re sponsored and arranged the first-ever index-based 144a Cyber cat bond.”
More details on Swiss Re’s third-party capital and ILS management activities can be found in our ILS manager directory.
Read all of our interviews with ILS market and reinsurance sector professionals here.
