Insurers have historically relied on the comfortable, predictable income flows that investment grade bonds provide to their portfolios, allowing for clear attribution, risk analysis, and simplicity of matching their long-dated liabilities. While that is still true, with bonds making up roughly 60-65% of a typical insurers portfolio, the rise of private assets and alternatives coupled with the low interest rate environment imposed by COVID has led many insurers to transform their portfolios and explore new products like private credit, real assets, and complex structured products (CLOs, RMBS, ABS, etc.) to capture new yields with tailored risk.
Naturally, this has led to an increase of insurers standing up in-house asset management arms and strategic partnerships with asset managers. This evolution has allowed insurers to capture previously inaccessible revenue streams, but at the cost of increased complexity as firms build out and acquire asset management arms and expand their asset class coverage.
About the Authors
Kevin Flynn
Solutions Architect - Investment Technology & Data
Kevin Flynn is a Solutions Architect within Alpha's Investment Technology & Data team in North America. Kevin has 10 years’ experience in the financial services industry supporting front & middle office implementations and data platform integrations, helping clients to design their architecture and streamline their workflows. Kevin is one of our OMS and EDM/MDM SMEs with a strong understanding of front-office workflows and data strategy design principles.
Dmitry (Mitya) Miller
Managing Director, General Manager for Aquata
Dmitry (Mitya) Miller is the Managing Director, General Manager for Aquata, Arcesium’s comprehensive self-service data platform purpose built for the investment management industry. Mitya is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the Aquata business, including P&L ownership, customer base growth, customer delivery and engagement, and product roadmap.
Mitya has over 20 years of experience building software platforms for portfolio management, valuation, security and reference data mastering, and enterprise data management. In addition, he is an expert in investment management technology, cloud architecture, and the data landscape in asset management.
Luke Bewley
Vice President, Sales & Partnerships, EMEA
Luke Bewley, Vice President, Sales & Partnerships, leads Asset Management business development in the EMEA region for Arcesium. In this role, he is responsible for building and growing Arcesium’s presence in the region and industry vertical, developing and executing the business’s go-to-market strategy and partnering with Asset Managers. Before Arcesium, Luke spent the almost a decade building a life insurance company in the UK.