This podcast episode features an interview with Timothy Yip, Executive Director at ILS Advisers, an insurance-linked securities focused advisory and investment management arm of HSZ Group.

Yip joined us to discuss the investor landscape in Asia and how that is reflected in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) space.

There's a clear appetite for diversifying sources of return, as we see among the global institutional investor base, so reinsurance is definitely relevant as an asset class.

But the Asia region investor base has differing levels of maturity and education and Tim Yip took us through how he looks at different countries in the region and their chances of allocating to the ILS and reinsurance linked asset class.

Yip provided an overview of the history and maturity of ILS as an asset class in the Asia region, as places like Singapore and Hong Kong look to position themselves as hubs for risk transfer business, including ILS.

Of course, pension funds in both Japan and South Korea have been allocating to ILS for some time now, while Singapore has sovereign wealth investors that participate in the sector. 

According to Yip, these areas in Asia and also if you expand to Asia Pacific and include Australia, have been the first to embrace the asset class because of the fact their institutional market size is just so much bigger.