Huang & Associates Analytics to provide risk analytics & index for ILS

A new company called Huang & Associates Analytics Ltd. (HAA) has been established to focus on meeting the growing insurance-linked securities (ILS) market’s demand for risk analytics solutions and advisory services.

Founder and CEO Kevin Huang has formed HAA to provide a suite of offerings to ILS market players. They are designed to help ILS investors and managers to overcome issues such as pricing, portfolio optimisation, risk aggregation and fair valuation.

Huang commented on the launch; “We are extremely excited to be the first risk analytics firm dedicated to serving the ILS market and believe that the products and services we offer will play a significant role in facilitating the continued growth of this market. It is anticipated that the ILS market will demand highly sophisticated analytical platforms and services as interest in these securities continues to grow.”

Huang has more than 15 years’ industry experience in insurance and reinsurance and has specialised in both underwriting and risk management. Most recently Huang was Chief Risk Officer, Americas at AIG, before which he was Head of Property Risk for the insurer and previously Head of Analytics for Torus. Prior to his time at Torus, Huang was Chief Risk Officer at CIG Re/New Castle Re, the reinsurance entities related to Citadel, where he gained valuable knowledge on ILS. Huang holds a Ph.D. Degree in Engineering from Clemson University and is a Fellow Casualty Actuary.

Huang continued; “Our mission is to facilitate the convergence between reinsurance and capital markets by providing comprehensive services and products that are designed to meet the needs of institutional investors and ILS fund managers. We are building a unique risk analytics firm. It will be responsive to market needs, have a rapid product development cycle, and perform as a true business partner by offering insightful advisory services.”

HAA intends to offer comprehensive risk analytics platform development and advisory services for ILS investors, as well as independent fair valuation services for publicly traded catastrophe bonds and privately placed reinsurance contracts.

HAA has developed a patent-pending mark-to-market methodology for reinsurance linked securities. Working with large asset managers, HAA intends to build a catastrophe index based on the fair valuation of the underlying securities, which will aid transparency in a market that can often seem opaque.

Huang said that the index will help to maximise the liquidity of the ILS market and also encourage secondary trading, with participation from a much broader investor base than currently available. Efforts to enhance transparency around pricing and the true cost of risk are essential to the ILS markets future development.

Yoshi Aiyama, who has joined HAA as the Chief Analytics Officer, commented on his appointment; “I am thrilled to become a founding member of this exciting organization. Kevin and I have truly complimentary skill-sets and we are determined to build a risk analytics firm that offers world-class analytical solutions. We have ready access to many talented individuals worldwide and are actively seeking to attract the best minds to join us in solving the many challenging issues facing the ILS market.”

Aiyama holds a Master’s Degree in Operations Research from North Carolina State University and most recently was leading an analytical team responsible for AIG’s property cat risk analytics within ERM. Throughout his 10-year career, Aiyama has constantly researched and applied the latest technologies and theories from different industries to the (re)insurance industry and continues to do so at HAA.

David Scoon has also joined the team as Chief Operating Officer. Scoon is a financial services executive with over 25 years of experience covering banking, private placements, venture capital, corporate finance and institutional asset management. A strategic thinker and an excellent communicator with a successful track record identifying, and developing new business opportunities. Scoon has an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business, Western University. He will be focused on the day to day operations of HAA as well as business development in Canada and the US.

HAA is seeking to provide something that is often cited as missing in the ILS market, a robust set of tools  and services to help investors analyse and manage portfolios of risk based on market-wide accepted metrics and valuations. Services such as this will benefit the entire market, by making investors better equipped and helping to promote transparency and liquidity.