Perez backs insurtech startup H2, aims to bring transparency to ILS investors

Andre Perez, well-known as the founder and former CEO of leading insurance-linked securities (ILS) facilitation, reinsurance management, fund administration, and risk transformation specialist Horseshoe, has returned backing a new venture, H2 Group, a Bermuda-based technology firm with a first product that promises to bring more transparency to ILS investors.

Perez is the main investor behind H2 Group and has taken on a non-executive Chairman position at the company.

With his background, broad knowledge of ILS and reinsurance, deep industry contacts and being known as an innovator, it will be very interesting to see how Perez’s guidance steers H2 Group to opportunities in an industry that is still overly manual, in process terms, and needs more technological efficiency.

H2 Group will specialise in developing bespoke solutions for the entire insurance and reinsurance industry, but its initial focus will draw on Perez’s specific expertise, being the ILS space.

The company intends to expand into other verticals of the insurance industry in time, targeting areas where technology can help to bring modernisation, greater efficiency and more transparency.

H2 Group says it is, “Committed to leveraging the latest in leading-edge technology to take a client-centric approach in offering novel products.”

The tech-firm’s primary goal is to, “Remove layers of operational inefficiencies in the value chain,” something that non-executive chairman, Andre Perez, believes is essential and hence he’s invested in H2 and is set to bring his strategic advice on product and business development to the company’s mission.

“Compared to other industries, the insurance sector has a lot of work to do when it comes to the use of latest technologies to enhance overall operations.

“There are several reasons for this apparent lag and H2 is set up to help improve the technology landscape in a collaborative and responsive manner,” Perez explained.

H2 Group’s launch product, named RUDDR, is a turnkey policy management system, designed to work synergistically with investor-facing portfolio dashboards, to provide ILS investors with unparalleled access and transparency into their collateral accounts, real-time data, automated reporting tools, and portfolio analytics, the company further explained.

Exposing this type of information on investments, in near-real-time, is going to be essential for the future of ILS, if the asset class is to continue gaining broader adoption.

For risk to flow more efficiently along the market chain, there is a need for technology to unlock blockages and modernise process, to enable greater value to be created, margin to be earned, and for intermediation costs to be more closely managed as well.

H2 Group explains that the proprietary RUDDR technology platform will leverage data to streamline the ILS transaction process.

This will work across different transaction types, of collateralized reinsurance, sidecars, or catastrophe bonds, providing a seamless user experience for investment managers so that they can focus on optimising their ILS portfolios, rather than middle and back-office processes.

H2 Group will make the platform available through licensing to any company involved in the management or administration of ILS transactions, it explained.

RUDDR has been designed and developed based on extensive research conducted by insurance and technology industry veterans and the collective experience of industry experts. H2 Group wants to ensure its clients have access to a highly responsive service and access to the data they need to make informed decisions on their ILS investments.

The company has put together a team with members located around the world.

Bror Muller is the CIO of H2 and is well-known in the space having spent more than 25 years guiding teams in the design, development, and support of IT solutions, specifically in the reinsurance space.

Muller may be best known for leading the technology team at Bermuda-based Tokio Millenium Re that developed a trading platform that supported several billion dollars of insurance-linked securities.

Commenting on the opportunity, Muller said, “While H2 Group’s initial focus will be on the ILS sector, it intends to develop technology solutions for insurance, traditional reinsurance, MGA/MGU’s, captives, as well as other related industry sectors.”