Insurance-linked securities in Asia – ILS Asia 2021 event highlights

Our sixth annual insurance-linked securities (ILS) event for and about the Asia region was held recently and we wanted to highlight some key insights from the event and direct our readers to on-demand replays of all of the broadcast video content.

For the second year running we held the ILS Asia event virtually.

We do hope to be back in the Asia region in 2022 to hold the conference in person and will let our readers now as soon as we can.

ILS Asia 2021, which this year was held in association with our kind headline sponsor AM RE Syndicate Inc., saw ten conference sessions held over five days, a mix of keynote speeches, interviews and panel discussions.

We actually have one more session to bring you, as timings just did not work out to fit it into the main event schedule.

So, a dedicated webcast titled “Unlocking Asian non-catastrophe risks for ILS capital” will be broadcast on July 29th, at 9am UK time (4pm Singapore or Hong Kong).

If you registered for the ILS Asia 2021 event you will automatically receive an invite to this in the next day, but if you didn’t register the first time around you can now register for this extra event session here.

For those who missed any of our event sessions, here is a brief recap and some links to articles related to each keynote, interview or panel discussion, from where you can find on-demand replays as well.

In the first session of the event, our attendees heard from the Hong Kong Insurance Authority, who explained that the government of China has been very supportive, especially in educating potential catastrophe bond sponsors from the mainland.

A panel discussion that followed explored the developing Hong Kong ILS market more deeply, noting that there’s an exciting and growing opportunity for the insurance-linked securities (ILS) sector to play a meaningful role in the Asia region.

Shevawn Barder, the CEO of our headline sponsor AM RE Syndicate Inc., explained to our audience that there is a clear opportunity for ILS funds, or reinsurers and investors in Asia to partner with expert originators and underwriters to access the returns of US specialty business, which closed out day one of the conference.

On day two of ILS Asia 2021, Timothy Yip, Executive Director at ILS Advisers, gave a great overview of the ILS investor landscape in Asia, concluding that the fragmentation of the Asia region means that for insurance-linked securities (ILS) managers, it’s more practical to focus on the locations with the more mature and larger institutional market.

Our first live panel session of the event heard ILS industry experts explained that knowledge and understanding of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) asset class is on the rise in Asia, but it remains vitally important to communicate early and persistently with the investor base, to close day two.

Speakers from specialist ILS fund manager Securis Investment Partners gave us an interesting interview on the importance of investor communications, with particular reference to some of the larger Asian catastrophe events of recent years, such as typhoon Jebi, to open day three.

Closing day three, our second live panel discussion featured three established pension fund investors, who said that the unexpected nature of Covid-19 related business interruption (BI) losses has been troubling, and that they believe it could be another two years before the insurance-linked securities (ILS) industry fully understands the impact.

We interviewed William Ho, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MS Amlin Asia Pacific on day four and he explained how the recent Phoenix 1 Re reinsurance sidecar arrangement, the first in Asia, is strategically important for the company.

Also on day four, Morton Lane, of Lane Financial LLC, gave a fascinating keynote speech with slides, explaining the performance of catastrophe bonds over two decades and asking whether investors got what they expected.

On our final day of the event, Cory Anger, Managing Direector of GC Securities discussed the growing Asian ILS market in an interview and said that there could be several catastrophe bonds issued out of Hong Kong by the end of this year.

Closing out day five, Paul Schultz, CEO of Aon Securities, gave a keynote presentation on the ILS market and its prospects for growth in Asia, saying that cultivating a regional sponsor base is vital to sustain domiciles in the region.

That’s the start of our coverage from the event and there will be more insights shared with our readers over the coming days.

All of these articles contain links to access on-demand replays of thee video broadcasts for each session, so if you missed anything or failed to register first time around, you can still catch-up at your leisure.

Don’t forget, if you didn’t register for ILS Asia 2021, you can still register for our extra session titled “Unlocking Asian non-catastrophe risks for ILS capital” will be broadcast on July 29th, at 9am UK time (4pm Singapore or Hong Kong).

As well as the on-demand playback, we will be archiving every session from our online and virtual ILS Asia 2021 conference over on our YouTube Channel in the coming weeks and audio versions will also be uploaded to our podcast which you can subscribe to here.

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