Nephila Gets In-Principle Approval From Lloyd’s to Form Managing Agency

Bermuda-based Nephila Capital announced that the Lloyd’s Board (previously called the Franchise Board) has given in principle approval to Nephila’s plan to form its own managing agency, subject to regulatory authorization.

Nephila is the largest institutional asset manager of vehicles dedicated to investing in natural catastrophe and weather risk. Nephila’s Syndicate 2357, which is backed by funds managed by Nephila, has been managed by Asta, the leading third party syndicate manager at Lloyd’s, since its inception in 2013.

Nephila Syndicate Management Ltd. (NSM) will submit an application to UK regulators, the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority, now that Lloyd’s has given approval to proceed with the project. NSM expects to assume the management of Syndicate 2357 in mid-2019 on receipt of formal authorization.

The syndicate, which has stamp capacity of £365 million ($473 million) for the 2018 year of account, is wholly supported by investment funds managed by Nephila Capital and writes property/catastrophe reinsurance, U.S. insurance and weather risk business.

Adam Beatty, currently the active underwriter of Syndicate 2357, will assume the role of chief executive officer of NSM, effective immediately.

NSM also announced several key senior hires. Gina Butterworth joined in June as director of Underwriting. She was previously director of Underwriting at ERS and spent many years in senior roles at Chaucer. She will also succeed Beatty as active underwriter of the syndicate, effective Jan. 1, 2019. Irfan Haq will join in October as director of Finance and Operations. Haq joins from Occam Underwriting where he was CFO and has previous senior Lloyd’s market finance experience from his seven years at CNA Hardy.

Charity Bare joined in May to assume the role of director of Risk and Compliance. Bare was previously head of Risk at Talbot Underwriting and worked in a risk management role at Brit Insurance prior to that. Sam Drysdale joins in September as head of Claims. Drysdale recently held the same role at Fidelis and worked in claims at Renaissance Re Syndicate Management before that. Salil Parkash will transfer from Nephila’s technology team to take on the role of head of IT for NSM. Parkash joined the company in August 2015 and previously worked at Commerzbank.

“We are excited about this new phase in the development of Nephila’s business at Lloyd’s. Over the last five years the syndicate has grown into a significant underwriting platform for Nephila’s funds. We are particularly delighted with the quality of the team we have been able to attract to Nephila to manage the new agency and all of us at Nephila look forward to working with them,” said Beatty.

Frank Majors, co-founder and co-CEO of Nephila Capital, said: “We consider our Lloyd’s business an important strategic initiative for Nephila. We have been fortunate to work with Asta these last five years and benefited enormously from their expertise and experience. We are now focused on supporting Adam’s efforts to create further opportunities for Nephila in this key market.”

An investment manager specializing in reinsurance risk, Nephila Capital offers investment products using instruments such as insurance-linked securities, catastrophe bonds, insurance swaps and weather derivatives. Nephila has assets under management of approximately $12.2 billion as of Aug. 1, 2018 and has been managing institutional assets since it was founded in 1998. The firm has over 125 employees working at its four offices in Bermuda, San Francisco, Nashville and London.

Source: Nephila Capital Ltd.