Hiscox Re Insurance Linked Strategies

The firm benefits from its position within the Hiscox Group, a large global insurer and Lloyd’s syndicate. This allows the ILS team to source reinsurance transactions directly from Hiscox’s own underwriting desks, which compete on and generate primary market flow. Standalone ILS managers typically rely entirely on broker intermediation for both catastrophe bond allocations and collateralized reinsurance placements, making the embedded access a structural differentiator.

Yes. The firm’s mandate covers liquid catastrophe bonds traded in the secondary market and privately negotiated collateralized reinsurance and retrocession contracts. This dual approach allows the portfolio to balance liquidity with the higher expected returns typically available in private transactions, where the parent company’s balance sheet relationships create informational advantages.

Hiscox Re ILS operates as a dedicated asset management unit within Hiscox Ltd, with separate accounts and fiduciary obligations to external investors. While it benefits from shared resources — including catastrophe modeling, actuarial expertise, and office infrastructure — the capital it manages is segregated from the group’s proprietary underwriting capital and receives pari passu treatment in transactions where both entities participate.

The portfolio concentrates on peak natural catastrophe perils, with historically heavy allocations to US windstorm, European windstorm, and Japanese earthquake risk alongside select exposures to other regions. The strategy favors remote, well-modeled layers of risk where attachment probabilities are low and the correlation to broader equity and credit markets is minimal.

The investment team uses both third-party vendor models and proprietary views informed by Hiscox Group’s own underwriting data. The group’s decades of claims experience and actuarial data feed into the ILS team’s risk selection and exposure management process, though specific modeling details and portfolio stress scenarios are not publicly disclosed.