At our recent ILS Asia 2021 conference, Shevawn Barder, CEO of AM RE Syndicate gave an excellent keynote speech on opportunities for ILS funds and investors to partner with businesses like her own to access the returns of US specialty business.

The keynote speech is then followed by a Q&A with Artemis editor Steve Evans, in which the subject was explored more deeply.

Barder explained why the US specialty lines opportunity should be attractive to investors and also reinsurers from the Asia region, as well as the rest of the world.

She called it an “opportunity for Asian reinsurers investors and capital providers to tap into the US primary market.”

She explains how the US program segment of the insurance market works, saying that the MGA model has become increasingly sophisticated and that “they have a very specialised and focused business model, and a very low cost infrastructure,” making them ideal for capital partners to work with and “an effective way to access the primary US market.”

Barder also explains how working with an MGA partner, such as a reinsurance intermediary like AM RE Syndicate, means investors and reinsurers can put their capital behind an origination focused underwriting partner, to gain access to business they may not otherwise find it easy to source.