Volante Capital Holdings (Bermuda) Ltd. (Volante), a multi-class international MGA platform that counts insurance-linked securities (ILS) specialist Nephila Capital’s holding company as its majority owner, has received ‘in-principle’ approval from Lloyd’s to launch Syndicate 1699.
Lloyd’s Syndicate 1699 from Volante will go into operation in the 2022 year of account, with an initial stamp capacity of £130 million the company said.
The Volante Syndicate at Lloyd’s will be managed by Asta Managing Agency Ltd. and will source its business through Volante’s existing international network of nine local service companies.
These companies will underwrite eight classes of insurance or reinsurance business across five continents, while Volante’s MGA teams will continue to underwrite their typical business separately, using third-party capacity backed binders.
“We seek to create a new kind of international Lloyd’s vehicle within the Volante Group, one which champions Lloyd’s standards and upper quartile underwriting performance,” explained Talbir Bains, founder and chief executive officer of Volante Global. “Our ambition is to establish a fully aligned partnership between Lloyd’s and our existing local underwriting offices, which will be re-established as service companies to Volante Syndicate 1699.”
“Our parallel syndicate and MGA entities, each backed by the world’s leading risk capital providers, will form an organisation unique in Lloyd’s and the London Market, one proven to deliver market-leading underwriting profitability,” Bains also said, “in less than four years, through the sponsorship of our strategic carrier partners, we have delivered a transformational MGA to the market. We now seek to continue the development with the creation of an international syndicate at Lloyd’s, and we are very privileged to partner with Asta in this evolution of the Volante Group. We are grateful to the team at Guy Carpenter, our advisors in the process.”
Asta CEO Julian Tighe added, “As an MGA operation, Volante has been an outstanding performer, based on its refreshing and entirely different business model. When they came to us for advice on forming a Lloyd’s syndicate, we immediately saw how their approach and objectives would be beneficial to the market, to capital providers, and, with Volante’s innovative products and confident commission structure, to distribution partners too. As Lloyd’s seeks new and innovative ways to grow the market, Volante brings not just a proven and practical technological approach, but also an organisational structure and ethos which will do just that. Asta is proud to stand alongside Volante in this exciting new venture.”
Nephila’s investment in Volante is a majority equity share, but it’s also possible the ILS fund manager is putting some capacity behind certain binders of business written by Volante’s MGA teams, or providing reinsurance to them.
Volante is another example of Nephila Capital’s expanding appetite for returns from specialty line risks.
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