Kansas Health Care Foundation puts $10m into ILS with Securis

The Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City has made a $10 million investment into insurance-linked securities (ILS) with an allocation to an ILS fund managed by Securis Investment Partners, the London-headquartered ILS and reinsurance-linked investments manager, according to a report.

The Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City is a non-profit established in 2002 and works to promote health care for uninsured and underserved residents of Kansas City, managing a portfolio of investments which help it to fund its work.

The Foundation has around $740 million of assets under management and had made a decision in 2017 to invest around 8% of its assets in alternative investments.

One of those it appears is insurance and reinsurance-linked investments and publication Pensions & Investments said that the Foundation selected the Securis Event Fund, which is a new post-event strategy set up to invest in catastrophe and weather related risks in the wake of the 2017 hurricanes and other disaster losses.

The Foundation has made a $10 million allocation to the Securis Event Fund, according to the report and confirmed by Rick Zimmer, CFO of the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City.

Minutes of an investment committee meeting at the Foundation show that it invested partly due to timing, as “while the market is small, only $90 billion, now is an opportune time to enter due to the number of insurance companies managing risk related to natural disasters,” the report says.

While a relatively small investment, the source of the allocation shows that understanding and appreciation of ILS and reinsurance as investments continues to expand and is appealing to smaller foundations, such as this, as well as the larger pension funds and endowments.

Securis Investment Partners jumped up the ranks of ILS fund managers in recent weeks, lifting its overall assets under management to $6.2 billion as of the start of the year.