Credit Suisse ILS hires Blattmann as Head of Distribution & Strategy

Credit Suisse Insurance Linked Strategies Ltd., the insurance and reinsurance investments focused unit of bank and asset management giant Credit Suisse, has hired a new Head of Distribution & Strategy in Eric Blattmann, an experienced investment distribution professional.

Blattmann joins the Credit Suisse Insurance Linked Strategies team from his most recent role with Swiss headquartered bank and investment house Vontobel.

It’s a hire into a key position for the Credit Suisse ILS team, as it continues to build-out an increasingly robust and institutional investor focused platform for its insurance and reinsurance investment operations.

Blattmann had worked at Vontobel for more than a decade, most recently as the Head of Public Distribution Investment Strategies Europe.

Before joining Vontobel, Blattmann had spent almost three years working at Merrill Lynch as a Vice President in its Capital Market operations. Prior to that he worked at Dutch bank ABN Amro, as Head of Public Distribution.

In his earlier career Blattmann was a founder of companies focused on investment research, with a particular focus on research and data for derivatives and instruments such as exchange traded funds (ETF’s).

His experience, contacts and track-record in distribution of investment opportunities and funds will prove valuable to the Credit Suisse ILS team is it looks to expand its investor base and bring the ILS and reinsurance linked opportunities it manages to a growing institutional audience.

Coming from the investment world, rather than reinsurance, Blattmann is ideally placed to help the specialist ILS fund managers attract new investor inflows at a time when rates have risen and awareness as well as interest in ILS as an asset class is rising once again.

The Credit Suisse ILS team have been operating since 2003 and managed around $7.2 billion of ILS and reinsurance linked assets as of September 2019, according to our Directory of ILS Fund Managers.