PGGM added $355m to Vermeer Re investment in 2019, to hit target $1bn cap

PGGM, the Dutch pension fund investment manager and the largest investor in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) space, made good on its option to upsize its allocation to Vermeer Reinsurance Ltd., the joint-venture vehicle that is managed by RenaissanceRe, taking Vermeer’s total capitalisation to over $1 billion in 2019.

Vermeer Reinsurance Ltd. (Vermeer Re) was launched in time for the January 2019 reinsurance renewals, as RenaissanceRe (RenRe) teamed up with long-time insurance-linked securities (ILS) institutional investor PGGM to launch the first managed and ‘A’ rated reinsurance vehicle for a single pension fund investor.

Vermeer Re began life with an initial capitalisation of $600 million, funded by PGGM on behalf of one of the pensions it administers, the Dutch healthcare and social welfare sector’s PFZW pension.

At the time it was revealed that the pension fund investor also had an option to allocate another $400 million to Vermeer Re in 2019, to underwrite any available growth opportunities and take the vehicle to $1 billion by year-end.

We can now report that this is precisely what happened.

RenRe took a further injection of capital from Dutch pension investor PGGM into the Vermeer Re rated reinsurance joint-venture in 2019.

Vermeer’s balance-sheet assets passed $1 billion by December 31st as a result, up from the $600 million reported at the end of 2018 at the time of its launch.

It’s now clear that PGGM allocated a total of $355 million more to Vermeer Re in 2019, taking its subscriptions to the vehicle to $955 million.

But, adding in over $48.6 million of net income earned by Vermeer Re in its first year, that had been retained in the reinsurer at the end of 2019, took the balance-sheet for the company to almost $1.004 billion at December 31st.

So PGGM took advantage of the option to upsize on its Vermeer Re investment, which will have been one of the ILS investments it made in the second-half of 2019 that helped to take its total ILS and reinsurance linked assets allocated to roughly US $6.5 billion of assets by the end of the year.

As we explained recently, PGGM grew its ILS portfolio by roughly 16% in 2019, to the US $6.5 billion mark, adding two new as yet unnamed reinsurance partners during the year as well.

Vermeer Re is now one of the investors largest single ILS allocations, perhaps actually its largest now.

PGGM has ten different ILS and reinsurance partners, with between them 12 allocations. So, at now more than $1 billion, it’s possible that Vermeer Re is the pension investors largest single venture in ILS at the moment.