Aspen Capital Partners (ACP), a division of Bermuda-based Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd., has $ 61.4 million in total premium income under its management in 2021, up from $ 680.8 million in 2020 and $ 32.6 million in 2021.
The dedicated unit includes Aspen Capital Markets (ACM), which offers investors a comprehensive product package that includes actively managed financial products and fully aligned sidecar investments. It provides external reinsurance sources and service capital from traditional reinsurance markets.
Mark Clutter, Aspen's Group Chairman and CEO, describes Aspen Capital Partners as a key component of the company's global growth and innovation strategy. Commenting on the unit's 2021 growth, he said: “This is particularly pleasing considering the challenging renewal environment that many capital market vehicles have recently experienced, and it reflects the sophistication of our solutions on property and accident lines. Investor Relations and our established achievement record.
Brian Doben (pictured) was appointed CEO of Aspen Capital Partners in May 2021, after eight years as CEO of Aspen Capital Markets. During that time, Doben has seen "a lot of changes" in the capital management space and how investors want to allocate assets over the entire property and accident (P&C) insurance landscape.
"Before any loss, it is difficult for investors to fully understand the risks and rewards of the various approaches used to manage P&C portfolios," Doben said. "No one wants to lose, but if losses do occur, it will give investors a better overview of different [capital management] strategies and the behavior of asset managers and sponsors."
Historically, Aspen Capital Markets has focused almost exclusively on the property disaster reinsurance business, hence its strengths in insurance-linked securities (ILS) structures such as side-by-side cars, natural disaster (CAT) securities and funds. Over the past decade, there has been a significant improvement in the frequency and severity of natural disaster losses, forcing investors to reevaluate their support for alternative capital.
"Loss experience over the past few years has helped investors differentiate between the strategies they can invest in. As a result, better managers and well-structured transactions have seen growth in the capital, while others have seen reductions in the capital support they receive from investors," Doben told Insurance Business.
"At the same time, the loss function and the learning provided have stimulated the natural evolution and maturity of the investment market. On the investor side, there is a wide variety of understandings around the ILS asset class.
In recent years, investor risk options have also changed. In the ILS market, many investors are now interested in structures that specialize in the insurance business and link to accident lines. According to Doben, this is a major change since ILS was "really a proxy for the natural disaster market" 10 years ago.
“Sometimes, these are different classes and different structures of business than we normally see in the ILS space,” he said. “But from our perspective at Aspen, we think it's important to tap into this capability for insurers and reinsurers in terms of being competitive in this space in the future.
"That segment of the market is still small compared to the catastrophic ILS market, but we believe that developing investor support in these non-catastrophic segments will give us a competitive advantage and allow us to offer a better value proposition. Our rights to our brokers, our insurers and the reinsurance side. "
Aspen Capital Partners continues to grow in 2022. Moving forward, the unit's focus is on bringing new and innovative capital market solutions to the market in partnership with trading partners and investors, benefiting from a diversified portfolio and strong fee returns.
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