Life Risk News: Volume 1, Issue 4, August 2022
Life risk-based investors ultimately boil down their underlying exposure to either longevity risk or mortality risk, and for life ILS funds, sometimes both. These exposures can act as a natural hedge to one another but constructing a portfolio of these products is a complex exercise. Life Risk News spoke to Olga Ho, Head, Underwriting Life at Credit Suisse ILS and Anna Bailey, Managing Partner at Chestnut Capital Management to learn about these nuances for this month’s cover story, Longevity and Mortality Risk’s Natural Hedge the Tip of the Iceberg for Portfolio Construction.
Much of the coverage of the life settlement market involves the secondary market – the sale of an individual life insurance policy to an investor by the policy owner. The industry has a very healthy tertiary market, however, accounting for a significant chunk of overall activity. We spoke to William Corry, Managing Director at Corry Capital Advisors, Nate Evans, CEO at Maple Life Analytics and Boris Ziser, Partner, and Co-Head of Structured Finance & Derivatives at Schulte, Roth & Zabel to learn more about this part of the life settlement world – and its impact on both fund managers and investors in Understanding The Tertiary Life Settlement Market Key To Success but Secondary Market Deal Flow Needs To Improve To Fuel Growth.
ESG has moved forward in the financial markets dramatically in the last few years. ILS and (re)insurance is a part of this ESG movement, thus providing many opportunities for our industry. Phil Kane, Partner, Portfolio Management and Senior Credit Officer; Adrian Mark, Partner, Head of Non-Life Analytics; and Jillian Williams, Partner, CUO and Head of ESG at Leadenhall Capital Partners explain ESG in the reinsurance industry and what it means to them in ILS and ESG – The Opportunities, our first commentary piece this month.
Last month our cover story looked at pension risk transfer, and so for this month’s poll, we asked Life Risk News readers Will Pension Risk Transfer Deal Activity in the UK Increase, Decrease or Stay Roughly the Same in the Next 5 Years?
Our second commentary piece this month comes from life settlements investment manager BroadRiver Asset Management Managing Director Brendan O’Flynn, who provides something of a timeline of the evolution of the life settlement industry in The Arc of Due Diligence – A Path to Institutional Acceptance of Life Settlements.
Last month we wrote about the state of the life insurance related insurtech market and so this month we took a deeper dive into the digital transformation of life insurance companies in a Q&A with Tom Scales, Senior Analyst at Celent.
If you want to compare mutual funds or hedge funds, many databases are available to help individuals to screen for the right fund or funds for them. But comparing life insurance isn’t nearly as easy. We spoke to Barry Flagg, President and Founder at Veralytic, and Keith Loveland, President at Loveland Consulting, for our final feature article this month, Frustrating Headwinds in Quest To See Life Insurance Adopted as Wealth Accumulation/Preservation Asset.
As always, if you’re interested in getting in touch, whether that’s with an idea for a topic that you’d like to see covered, or just to offer some feedback, please do so at greg@liferisk.news or send a note to the team at editor@liferisk.news. In the meantime, on behalf of ELSA, we hope you enjoy this new issue of Life Risk News.
Greg Winterton, Contributing Editor, Life Risk News