ILS fund manager Gildenbrook launched with $850m of capital by Brookman

The Gildenbrook Group has been founded by experienced ILS industry executive Daniel Brookman and has today launched Gildenbrook Capital Management Ltd., an independent alternative investment fund manager focused on the insurance-linked securities (ILS) asset class.

Brookman most recently led alternative reinsurance and ILS activities at re/insurer AXA XL, before which he worked at reinsurance firm Montpelier Re leading capital market initiatives, and before that at investment bank Barclays again with a focus on reinsurance and ILS.

The Gildenbrook Capital Management Ltd. has launched in the fourth-quarter of 2020 and already has some $850 million of institutional assets under its advisory as of January 2021.

The ILS fund manager will offer its services to sophisticated institutional investors who are looking to access alternative risk premia sourced from the global life and non-life insurance and reinsurance market.

The new ILS fund manager is part of the broader Gildenbrook group, which is made up of the alternative asset manager, a reinsurance underwriting platform built around Gildenbrook Re (an incorporated segregated accounts company in Bermuda) and also a financial technology (fintech) development firm, with operations in the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and Singapore respectively.

Daniel Brookman, Founder and CEO of Gildenbrook, commented on the launch, “I am delighted to announce the launch of GCM. The attractiveness of the opportunities which exist today in our target markets, together with our group’s innovative structure and differentiated approach have resonated with the institutional investor community.

“Gildenbrook’s multi-faceted combination of asset management, reinsurance and financial technology development within one group positions our clients well as (re)insurers and institutional investors look to forge meaningful strategic partnerships with each other.”

As a group, Gildenbrook aims to focus on the intersection of alternative investments, reinsurance underwriting and their related analytical technologies.

The company aims to become a strategic partner to large investors, such as pensions and sovereign wealth funds, as well as to insurance or reinsurance brokers and counterparties.

The ILS fund manager arm aims to take a highly quantitative approach towards investing in reinsurance and insurance assets, making use of proprietary technology developed by Gildenbrook’s fintech development company, Gildenbrook Technologies Pte Ltd., in Singapore.

In terms of investments, ILS manager Gildenbrook Capital Management aims to provide equity-like returns with little or no correlation to traditional equity or fixed income markets.

The asset manager is domiciled in the British Virgin Islands, incorporated in October 2020, and is licensed as an approved investment manager and regulated by the BVI Financial Services Commission to manage open-ended funds, closed-ended funds, ‘fund of one’ and separately managed account structures on behalf of institutional investors.

Gildenbrook is an intriguing new entrant to the ILS fund management industry, in particular as it has its own financial technology development unit.

The Singapore based fintech arm aims to build proprietary software, algorithms and systems to support the insurance-linked investment and reinsurance activities of the Gildenbrook Group and their respective clients.

The fintech company is already working on the development of artificial intelligence applications for reinsurance pricing and risk assessment.

As technology adoption and development accelerates in reinsurance and ILS it will become a key differentiator for managers, both in their underwriting and investment activities.