ILS capital from Nephila gives Blenheim flexibility: Peter Scales

Nephila Capital, the world’s largest insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund manager has been revealed as the main capital provider for new Lloyd’s syndicate Blenheim Syndicate 5886, a partnership that will improve the ventures flexibility, says Peter Scales.

Nephila will provide support to Blenheim via its existing corporate member at Lloyd’s of London, explained former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Cathedral Capital and leader of Blenheim Syndicate 5886 (Blenheim), Peter Scales, speaking with Artemis.

“Nephila will be the largest single contributor to a syndicate stamp that is comprised entirely of third party capital ranging from traditional Lloyd’s names to sophisticated ILS funds,” continued Scales.

Specialist Lloyd’s of London insurance and reinsurance marketplace confirmed Blenheim’s approval on October 24^th, 2016, and the syndicate is expected to start writing business for the 2017 year of account.

According to Asta Managing Agency the syndicate is capitalised to the tune of £150 million, and will underwrite U.S. and international treaty reinsurance, direct insurance (D&F) and certain specialty lines. Furthermore, Asta explained that Blenheim would utilise a diverse capital base from ILS sources, trade, and private names, as underlined by Scales.

Scales told Artemis that “a diversity of capital sources in tandem with key relationships such as Nephila,” provides the syndicate with a “high degree of flexibility to source capital if and when required in the future.”

“Either in response to building a wider portfolio of short tail lines or if there are genuine dislocations in markets in which we trade,” added Scales.

Asta, which also manages Nephila’s own syndicate, Nephila Syndicate 2357, helped Blenheim achieve approval from Lloyd’s to begin underwriting in 2017, and was recently praised for its efforts by Blenheim’s Managing Director (MD), John Lynch.

“We are very grateful to Asta for the expertise and resources that they have committed to this project that have enabled us to get Blenheim up and running. With new appointments to be announced over the coming weeks we can now focus on the task of building a quality business,” said Lynch.

Being the largest ILS fund and catastrophe or weather reinsurance asset manager in the world, Nephila has access to a deep, diversified pool of capital that, and as pointed out by Scale, will provide Blenheim with both the flexibility and ability to call on a broad and profound investor base, if and when it needs to.

Nephila continues to find innovative ways to expand its reach into key insurance and reinsurance markets, such as Lloyd’s, and this is another example of putting its third-party sourced capital to work backing an experienced underwriting team for the benefit of its investor base.