Partnership & alignment critical in ILS: AXIS Capital executives

Working with third-party capital using insurance-linked securities (ILS) calls for a partnership approach and alignment of interests, AXIS Capital executives told Artemis in a recent video interview.

In the next in our series of sponsor showcase video interviews for the upcoming Artemis ILS NYC 2022 conference (held April 22nd in New York City), we welcomed senior executives from major global re/insurer AXIS Capital, one of our Gold sponsors for the conference.

Joining us were: Ann Haugh, President of Global Property, Reinsurance; Katie Partington, Chief Underwriting Officer, Reinsurance; and Chris Caponigro, Global Head of AXIS ILS.

We discussed how AXIS Capital has been utilising third-party capital and partnering with investors within its underwriting operations and what the executives foresee for the future use of ILS at the company (watch the interview in full here).

AXIS Capital has been leveraging third-party capital within its underwriting business for more than a decade, and the unit dealing with this was rebranded AXIS ILS last year and has been staffing up ever since, suggesting a growing focus.

Ann Haugh, President of Global Property, Reinsurance, explained, “Our strategy has been to use third-party capital to build our portfolio, so we certainly expect to continue to grow these relationships and will keep doing so as it fits alongside our long-term business objectives.

“By design, we can only grow our capital so fast, but we can manage risk for a lot of people, so by increasing our capital sources we can deploy more capacity that is ultimately needed in the market.

“We work with dependable, stable and diversified capital partners, in exactly the same way as we’d think of building a reinsurance panel, where partnership and alignment are critical.”

Partington, Chief Underwriting Officer, Reinsurance at AXIS Capital, went on to say that the company is very open to working in partnership with investors to identify opportunities that are attractive and meet their requirements as an investment.

“It’s important to note that all of our portfolios have the potential to be shared with investors and we actually have done work across several different portfolios to look at investor appetite, it’s not just been in property and cat,” Partington said.

Adding that, “It really is up to the investor to tell us, how they really see the market, what they’re looking for in terms of return profiles, not just quantitative but qualitative, and we can see what’s of interest to them. We’re very open to having those conversations.”

Chris Caponigro, Head of AXIS ILS, the dedicated third-party capital and ILS unit at AXIS Capital, explained that the third-party capital offering is based on working closely with its investors.

“First and foremost AXIS is an underwriting company and from that base we’re willing to share with private investors, to compliment the public capital investors that are currently on the platform.

“What really is so unique here, is the level of transparency and willingness to build structures and bring underwriting capacity to the organisation in a very capital efficient way for investors.”

AXIS Capital is looking to expand its ILS activities, alongside its own business and the executives took us through their thinking on the markets at this time and the opportunity for investors.

“It’s important to say as well, I think, that we’re a gross underwriting operation and we don’t make a distinction between ILS capital or our own,” Haugh told us during the interview.

Hear more on how re/insurers are embracing insurance-linked securities at the upcoming Artemis ILS NYC 2022 conference in New York on April 22nd (get your ticket today).

For details and to register for the conference, visit the event website: www.artemis.bm/ils-nyc-2022/.

The full video interview is embedded below and can also be viewed in full, along with previous Artemis Live video interviews here.

You can also listen in audio to our interviews by subscribing to the Artemis Live podcast here.

View all of our kind sponsors of the ILS NYC 2022 conference below:

For all enquiries regarding sponsorship opportunities please contact [email protected]