Parametric MGA Descartes Underwriting hires ILS specialist Le Roux

Descartes Underwriting, the start-up insurance technology (insurtech) managing general agency (MGA) that focuses on parametric and data-driven risk transfer products, has hired Edern Le Roux, an ILS specialist previously from SCOR Investment Partners.

Descartes Underwriting launched recently with an ambition to utilise the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market as a source of capacity for its parametric insurance and reinsurance risk transfer products.

Hiring Le Roux gives the firm expertise and connections in the ILS investment sector, which will help it in achieving this ambition as it begins to build out a portfolio of risk.

Le Roux, a qualified actuary, was Head of ILS Risk at SCOR Investment Partners, where he had responsibility for Risk Management of the ILS funds of that group since October 2014.

Before that, Le Roux worked at AXA as a Senior Catastrophe and Reinsurance Analyst.

Tanguy Touffut, CEO of Descartes Underwriting, commented on the hire, “Alternative capacity is part of our underwriting ecosystem which includes brokers, insurers and reinsurers. Edern is bringing up its invaluable expertise of the ILS market to strengthen our relationships with ILS funds.”

Le Roux added, “I’m thrilled to join Descartes Underwriting, the team has a significant market access and is fast growing. We aim at building long-term relationships with ILS funds alongside brokers, insurers and reinsurers.”

Descartes has begun to create a portfolio of parametric insurance and reinsurance risk on a worldwide basis on behalf of the carrier partners it works with.

Using parametric triggers allows Descartes to offer protection in regions where insurance is not always readily available. It will also be attractive to ILS capacity providers, given their appetite for parametric risk is often strong due to the transparency inherent in these risk transfer transactions.

“The dramatic improvement in technology performance and data availability in recent years allows us to structure unique covers. This can be done through the use of Machine Learning techniques. Edern, with his 10 years of experience in the Cat Modeling and Data Science field, will help us manage this tremendous quantity of data and extract the best information for modeling and structuring ad-hoc covers for our clients,” Touffut explained.

“There is so many data out there from climate models to satellite measurements and imagery. We will use this data for building risk models at a highly granular scale allowing Descartes to provide index covers at factory level for industries or at the field level for agriculture for example,” Le Roux added.