Twelve Capital targets life ILS opportunities in partnership with Farsight

Twelve Capital, the Zurich headquartered investment manager with a focus on insurance-linked securities (ILS), insurance and reinsurance linked investments, is set to develop a life ILS investment offering, announcing a strategic tie-up with specialist life ILS boutique Farsight Partners.

Twelve Capital and Farsight are entering into a strategic partnership focusing on life ILS, seeing an opportunity to bring capital markets funding to life insurance and reinsurance markets, while delivering a complementary alternative asset class to investor clients.

The pair noted that, “Insurance-Linked Securities (ILS) can provide capital as well as risk capacity to the life insurance industry, promoting its growth and efficiency.”

They further explain that investors are “increasingly familiar” with insurance-linked securities (ILS) as an alternative asset class that can bring important diversified returns to an asset portfolio, with life ILS offering a diversifier compared to more typical P&C ILS investments.

Insurance and reinsurance related risks offer institutional investors a welcome source of diversifying returns, to complement their traditional assets, Twelve Capital explained.

Farsight Partners is an established life insurance-linked securities specialist, providing boutique structuring services to develop life ILS opportunities, with experience in tailoring bespoke solutions to novel, complex or time-critical situations.

Farsight was founded by Paul Whiting, the former Life Chief Underwriting Officer at London-based ILS manager Securis Investment Partners.

With Twelve Capital’s asset management expertise and investor clients and Farsight’s life ILS specialism, the pair will hope to grow a new life ILS offering to satisfy investor demand.

Whiting, CEO & CIO at Farsight Partners commented on the news, “Life ILS investments can allow market participants to grow and fill protection gaps, or in some cases, make the industry more resilient by offering risk capacity to the (re-)insurers. Our strategic partnership with Twelve Capital brings together highly specialised and complementary skill sets and an institutional-quality investment management platform.”

Urs Ramseier, Executive Chairman of Twelve Capital, added, “The Farsight team has long and wide experience in investing in Life ILS, including structuring bespoke solutions for the industry and investors. Our partnership allows us to focus on long-term trends and market inefficiencies in the global life insurance industry, complementing our ILS expertise to provide a stable, long-term, lighter tail and diversifying source of return to our investors.”