Inver Re is understood to be assisting with the capital raise, which sources said would take a leaf out of Fidelis’ playbook in structuring itself into two parts, with separate rated balance sheet and MGA entities.
City of London grandee Martin Gilbert, chair of AssetCo and Revolut, and co-founder and former CEO at Aberdeen Asset Management, is attached to the project in a non-executive capacity, sources said.
The (re)insurance market is closely watching how the Fidelis IPO for its rated balance sheet is received, after the business split itself in two.
The carve-out of its MGA isolated the portion of the business that is currently far more in favour with private equity investors, as risk-bearing reinsurers have suffered low valuations following years of depressed returns.
Despite the clear upturn in rates at 1 January, there are still major headwinds facing capital-raising initiatives for new underwriting ventures, with the volatility of property cat risk one line item in question for investors.
Private equity investors have largely held back from investing in the market since Hurricane Ian, due partly to relative value concerns, and, more specifically, to concerns over exit risk involved in greenfield ventures, with the Class of 2020 carriers still working towards this goal.
There have been some small capital inflows for specific sidecars taking business from established carriers, including launches from Ark and Ariel, running up to $1bn for Vantage's sidecar.
But there have not been any clean-slate start-ups.
Other nascent ventures underway include a project led by former Everest Re reinsurance leader John Doucette and former Catalina founder Chris Fagan, with the latter’s business also using an MGA/carrier setup and a focus on acquiring businesses to be restructured using legacy disposals.
Hoshina is known in the industry for having led the growth of TMR, the Bermudian reinsurance arm of Japanese carrier Tokio Marine, as president and CEO from 2000 to 2014.
He has previously been linked with other potential fundraising launches.
He was among the pioneers of using ILS to transfer tail risk to the capital markets, and to earn fee income from ILS transformer services, reducing volatility.
Under Hoshina’s leadership, TMR built a reputation as leading provider of fronting and transformer services for collateralised markets looking to access primarily catastrophe reinsurance risk.
He oversaw the move to re-domicile TMR out of Bermuda to Zurich, and won approval from US authorities to establish a US branch.
Hoshina moved to the role of vice chairman at TMR in October 2014, at the same time the CEO role was taken up by Stephan Ruoff, now global head at Schroders ILS Capital.
TMR was sold for $1.5bn to RenaissanceRe in 2018.
Hoshina and Inver Re declined to comment.
