Vario Partners, a specialist risk advisor launched in late 2014 by three former PwC exec’s to connect portfolios of insurance or reinsurance risk with capital market investors through securitisation or ILS structures, has added two new hires to its team as it readies itself for the January 2017 renewal.
Vario intends to “create a channel between (re)insurance and capital markets for securitised portfolios of diversified risk” and as a result the ability to effectively analyse and model portfolio’s of re/insurance risk and to structure them into securitised financial instruments are key to its aims.
Markus Gesmann has joined Vario Partners as Head of Research and Modelling from Lloyd’s of London, where he managed a team of analysts supporting Lloyd’s itself and managing agents with insight and analysis on pricing, premiums, underwriting performance and more. Gesmann is also heavily involved in statistical analysis, taking a lead role in a variety of ‘R’ user groups for the insurance or reinsurance industry.
Previously, Gesmann worked for Libero Ventures, a Lehman Brothers where he helped to price and analyse alternative risk transfer solutions and capital markets risk transfer for P&C insurance and reinsurance clients.
The second hire to join Vario Partners is Michael Kontaratos who will join from J.P. Morgan where he is an executive director and VP in the securitised products group. Specialising in financial structuring, Kontaratos will bring significant experience in the creation and transacting of insurance or reinsurance risks in securitised form to capital market or ILS investors.
Kontaratos has been at J.P. Morgan for almost 13 years, working in various fixed income analyst and securitisation roles at the investment bank.
Quentin Moore, founding executive partner of Vario, commented on the hires; “The appointments of Markus and Mike are another milestone in the development of the Vario team.
“With a strong business pipeline from all sectors of the insurance industry for our whole account securitisation model, and our team of experts now complete, we have all the elements in place to complete transactions and build the Vario funds.”
With the addition of these two new hires Vario believes it is well placed to activate and complete on transactions effective from 1 January 2017.
View all of our Artemis Live video interviews and subscribe to our podcast.
All of our Artemis Live insurance-linked securities (ILS), catastrophe bonds and reinsurance video content and video interviews can be accessed online.
Our Artemis Live podcast can be subscribed to using the typical podcast services providers, including Apple, Google, Spotify and more.
