Ontario Teachers’ appoints new MD for insurance-linked securities

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), the largest private pension fund in Canada with around $171.4 billion of assets under management, has announced a promotion to Managing Director for the person responsible for OTPP’s insurance and reinsurance linked investment team.

Ontario Teachers’ has been investing in insurance linked securities (ILS) for a number of years, both across the 144a catastrophe bond market as well as other collateralised reinsurance structures.

In the announcement, Bjarne Graven Larsen, Executive Vice-President and Chief Investment Officer of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan said he was pleased to announce the promotions of Gillian Brown to Managing Director for Credit, Insurance Linked Securities and Equity Products at the pension fund.

Brown joined Ontario Teachers’ in 1995 and has over 20 years of experience in equity and derivatives investment management.

In the new role, Brown will remain responsibile for Ontario Teachers’ credit, insurance linked securities and equity indexing portfolios and will report to Ziad Hindo, Senior Managing Director of Capital Markets.

Brown has had the ILS investment team reporting into her since early 2016, this move just sees her becoming MD and no changes have been made to the team managing that portfolio.

In recent years Ontario Teachers’ has dialed back its ILS and reinsurance linked investment allocation somewhat, in response to market conditions, but ILS still remains a core part of its overall investment strategy.