SCOR Investment Partners and Coriolis’ combined ILS assets pass $2.5bn

SCOR Investment Partners, the asset management company of the global reinsurance group SCOR, continued to benefit from new capital inflows to its insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund strategies through 2020, with its combined ILS assets including London-based Coriolis now surpassing $2.5 billion.

Overall, SCOR Investment Partners, the SCOR reinsurance group’s asset manager, has reported gross inflows across the range of strategies it operates of EUR 1.017bn (around US $1.2bn) in 2020 from third-party investors.

Net inflows for the asset manager were more than EUR 510m in 2020, with outflows largely related to the run-off of corporate loan funds managed by SCOR Investment Partners (SCOR IP).

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund strategies have been beneficiaries, with the SCOR IP ILS funds having $1.788 billion of assets by December 2020, while London subsidiary Coriolis Capital Limited reported $659 million at the time, so around $2.4 billion combined.

Now, SCOR IP has reported today that its ILS assets under management, across catastrophe bonds, collateralised reinsurance and other assets in fund’s under management of SCOR IP and Coriolis Capital Management, have surpassed US $2.5 billion by the end of 2020.

“SCOR Investment Partners is consolidating its positioning on the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, having entered the elite group of asset managers with more than USD 2.5bn in ILS under management as of end-December 2020,” the asset manager explained this morning.

François de Varenne, CEO of SCOR Investment Partners, added, “Our success reinforces my belief in our goals for the third-party asset management business. We have strengthened our ILS platform, developed new junior and mezzanine debt strategies for real estate and infrastructure and integrated non-financial criteria into our high-yield bond and leveraged loan funds. In 2021, SCOR Investment Partners will continue to offer its clients strategies that can respond to their needs in a context of particularly low interest rates.”

Overall third-party assets under management at SCOR IP have now reached EUR 5.1 billion, of which the ILS funds contiribute a significant amount.

With synergies between the parent reinsurance company SCOR and the Atropos ILS funds at SCOR IP set to increase, the growing scale of the ILS assets will become a more meaningful input for the company as a whole, across reinsurance and asset management.

SCOR aims to put ILS at the heart of its global reinsurance business, with a more coordinated approach to ILS for its clients adopted, offering traditional reinsurance capacity alongside collateralised capacity from SCOR Investment Partners’ long-standing ILS fund Atropos, as well as from Coriolis Capital, the London-based ILS fund manager SCOR acquired in 2019.

SCOR began to front risks for the ILS funds in 2020, as SCOR Global P&C fronting capacity was used for ILS over-the-counter transactions on behalf of SCOR Investment Partners funds, making it simpler for clients to access collateralised capacity from the ILS funds and easier for the funds to enter into transactions with an wider range of SCOR clients.

SCOR IP is also working to expand its distribution of investment funds, with new hires in its sales and marketing division.

The asset manager has reorganised its sales and marketing functions, into: Client Solutions – Eurozone, headed by Alexandre Jaeglé; Client Solutions – International, headed by Steven Le Moing; and Marketing, headed by Nadège Picharles.

The goal is to enhance the geographic reach of the sales efforts and offer more personalised support to third-party investors at the same time.

de Varenne said, “In 2020, we crossed the threshold of EUR 5bn in third-party assets under management, and we are now looking to consolidate the positions we have on our historical markets, in France, the Benelux and Switzerland, and to step up our development in Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region.”

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