Canopius hires Marco Silva as property treaty reinsurance underwriter

Global specialty insurance and reinsurance group Canopius has announced the hiring of Marco Silva, who was previously at SCOR and has worked on ILS and collateralised retrocession transactions, as a property treaty reinsurance underwriter.

Silva takes up the role of senior underwriter, property treaty reinsurance in London for Canopius, bringing significant experienced gained in a variety of reinsurance, retro and insurance-linked securities (ILS) roles in the UK, Europe and Bermuda.

His hiring comes at a good time for Canopius, which has recently launched its own third-party reinsurance capital and ILS fund management unit Canopius Capital Management, as it looks to access different forms of capital to back its underwriting, while earning fee income in the process.

Canopius’ goal with its Capital Management unit is to be able to offer a broader set of products to clients and increase line sizes, backed by capital with a range of return requirements from institutional investors.

Silva has experience in ILS markets gained from his time working at Pentelia Capital Management (PCM), the French-backed ILS fund manager based in Bermuda. In his time at this firm he managed an inwards retrocession portfolio and was jointly responsible for buying and selling catastrophe bonds.

Silva worked at SCOR SE from 2011 in the UK and France, where he was deputy manager of the group’s non-life retrocession purchases, so this included input into the Atlas series of cat bonds and sidecars. More recently he became a property treaty underwriter for SCOR in London.

Canopius can make good use of Silva’s ILS and third-party capital expertise, in the Canopius ILS management unit, which underwrites using Bermuda SPI Excelsa Re.

The unit has already made a small sidecar trade, featuring a treaty and property portfolio backed by a select group of investors and it looks to expand on this into 2019, we understand.

Jamie Wakeling, Chief Underwriting Officer for reinsurance at Canopius, commented on the hire, “We are delighted to welcome someone of Marco’s talent and diverse experience to our property treaty reinsurance team. We are always looking to attract high-calibre individuals to our already successful treaty business and Marco will enhance our client and broker offering. Our people are the key differentiator in a crowded market and Marco will help drive our business forward.”