Canopius hires Brent Slade as Head of ILS with remit to expand activity

Specialty insurance and reinsurance underwriter the Canopius Group has hired well-known insurance-linked securities (ILS) focused executive Brent Slade in Bermuda, who will become the firm’s new Head of ILS and have a remit to expand ILS activities for the Group, Artemis has learned.

Slade is very well-known in the ILS market globally and in particular in the Bermuda reinsurance market, having held roles at Flagstone, Horseshoe, Hamilton and Markel’s Lodgepine.

As Head of ILS at Canopius Reinsurance in Bermuda, Slade will lead all insurance-linked securities (ILS) activities and be tasked with expanding ILS activity at the company.

Part of this, we understand, will be a focus on expanding the size and scope of Canopius’ reinsurance sidecar business activities.

Canopius launched special purpose insurer (SPI) Excelsa Re Ltd. back in 2018 and has been using the structure as a collateralized source of reinsurance that acts as a sidecar and participates alongside its main Bermuda and Lloyd’s syndicate underwriting vehicles, taking a quota share of certain largely property catastrophe focused business from them.

As well as continuing to expand the scope of the Excelsa Re collateralized reinsurance sidecar, we understand Slade as Head of ILS, will also be tasked with expanding Canopius’ range of ILS market offerings.

This could include dedicated ILS funds, or other structures, that can complement the Canopius Group capabilities and help expand its balance-sheet capacity.

Alongside product range, Slade is also expected to have a focus on building new third-party investor capital relationships at Canopius.

Slade was most recently the President of Markel’s retrocessional reinsurance ILS fund management unit Lodgepine Capital Management Limited, a role he took up in late 2019.

Prior to that, Slade worked at Hamilton’s third-party capital arm, Hamilton Capital Partners, where he was a senior vice president from May 2018.

Before his time at Hamilton, Slade spent four years working at ILS facilitator Horseshoe Group, where he was Chief Operating Officer for the firm with responsibility for leading its business operations in ILS, risk transformation and other services for collateralized reinsurance activities.

Between 2005 and 2013, Slade was a member of the executive committee and Chief Marketing and Capital Markets Officer for Flagstone Reinsurance. At Flagstone Re, Slade led capital market initiatives including capital structure transactions, ILS, catastrophe bonds and collateralized sidecar businesses, as well as assisting with investor relations and company-wide marketing.

Slade previously worked as an Executive Vice President and Principal of West End Capital Management, a hedge fund and institutional investment manager focused on fixed income arbitrage.

With this career history, Slade has a wealth of experience to offer Canopius across the range of insurance-linked securities (ILS) and collateralized reinsurance products, as well as in the use of third-party capital within reinsurance.