PartnerRe gets Olympus investment for retro & specialty vehicle Laplace-C

Bermuda headquartered reinsurance company PartnerRe has set up a new retrocession and specialty reinsurance focused investment vehicle named Laplace-C and secured backing from private equity player Olympus Partners.

Laplace-C has been established to take advantage of opportunities seen in the global reinsurance market at this time and we understand is just one of the initiatives PartnerRe has been involved in around the start of the year, that have either brought new capital to market or put to work capital the reinsurer had already secured.

The structure, which details are lacking on, will have a particular focus on generating returns from the favorable market conditions seen across a range of short-tail specialty and retrocessional reinsurance lines of business.

It’s possible that Laplace-C may represent a segregated cell or account within another PartnerRe reinsurance investment structure, such as the Lorenz Re quota share and sidecar like vehicle, but we cannot be certain at this time.

It seems most likely that this should be considered a sidecar transaction, hence we’ve listed it with other sidecar transactions in our directory.

PartnerRe has secured backing from private equity firm Olympus Partners for Laplace-C, an investment manager with a long-term focus and over $8.5 billion under management and largely sourced from corporate pension funds, endowment funds and state-sponsored retirement programs.

Olympus Partners revealed its investment in Laplace-C, calling the opportunity “a retrocession and specialty reinsurance vehicle managed by PartnerRe.”

“We have been actively looking at opportunities to invest in the current favorable reinsurance cycle and believe the newly created Laplace-C vehicle represents a differentiated value proposition combining superior risk-adjusted returns with established market access to a broadly diversified book of business,” explained Olympus Partners Matt Boyd.

“We are excited to partner with PartnerRe, one of the leading reinsurers in the world with a long history of exceptional underwriting returns.”

PartnerRe has expanded its reinsurance investment partnerships in recent years, most notably with Dutch pension investor PGGM through the Huygens structure.

PartnerRe had also secured €750 million of commitments from French insurance group Covéa last year, which was due to be injected into special purpose reinsurance vehicles managed by the Bermuda based reinsurance firm.

With these initiatives and now this Laplace-C structure, PartnerRe is working with investors to enhance its own capacity and will also be earning fee income in return.