Opinion

Currently, most people trying to describe the ILS manager world might break the peer group into three broad categories: reinsurer-affiliated platforms, independent owner-operated firms and asset manager-backed vehicles.

Amid the information overload of results season, “man-made catastrophes” appear to be the main emerging theme – albeit manifesting in two very different ways.

Benjamin Franklin apparently once said that ‘nothing in life is certain except death and taxes’ – and it seems like the adage resonated with the risk modellers of the (re)insurance industry.

Lloyd's syndicates are hugely reliant on reinsurance and retrocession to manage their catastrophe exposures – so the Corporation's plans to help make it easier for players to source ILS capacity couldn't come soon enough.

In the midst of reinsurance conference season you might expect there to be a tendency towards group-think.

Cracking into a crème brûlée will always make me think, in passing, of (re)insurance.

At Munich Re's ILS roundtable in Monte Carlo, one of the speakers raised the concept of whether a "flight to quality" amongst ILS investors might be better labelled a "flight to alignment".

Every year, returning from the Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous is like emerging from a chrysalis – a draining process of freeing oneself from a tiny hive of frantic activity.

Rewind a few years and “hot money” was one of the pejorative labels thrown at a burgeoning ILS sector.

There’s no doubt that the stress of a serious hit from Hurricane Dorian to Florida reinsurers will add age lines to the ILS market.

The reinsurance and ILS markets have spent two years talking about losses, but perhaps more focus on the good years would help reduce some of the noise in the bad years.

Do we need new labels for the different types of ILS managers that exist?