Radix ILS founders put own capital to work on pure reinsurance play to bolster investor return confidence

By Sophie Roberts

March 26 - (The Insurer) – The launch of Radix ILS, a fresh reinsurance venture, promises to reshape parts of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) space with a focus on transparency, technology and sustainable capital strategies, according to founder and CEO Hanni Ali.

Speaking exclusively to The Insurer TV on the sidelines of the Bermuda Risk Summit earlier this month, Ali shared insights into what this new venture aims to achieve and the significant role he hopes it will play moving forward.

Radix ILS, which officially launched at the end of January, has also just announced that its Bermuda-based collateralised reinsurer Radix Alpha has been funded.

Its registration was issued last Friday after receiving a conditional approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority in February, which means it can now start writing collateralised reinsurance.

“The vision is multiline reinsurance and reinsurance all the time. It's not about building out an E&S carrier in the U.S., or not looking to try and launch a Lloyd's syndicate in the next year or two. None of that,” said Ali.

“The focus is about being a good reinsurance partner to our clients and doing that in as broad a spectrum of risk as possible as we can develop investor appetite for which is a crucial thing to communicate."

Radix ILS is committed to a "digital-first" approach, aiming to harness technology for seamless investor interaction and risk transparency. "Technology can do amazing things," Ali explained. "We started with a portal for investors, offering them timely transparency on the risks they are assuming."

“We're going to want to bring as much data to bear, wrap it in the modelling and analytics that we know we can present to investors and hopefully be in a position to provide them with sufficient information and understanding that they're willing to allocate and assume some of that risk,” he explained.

Radix's CEO is Ali, who spent more than 10 years at Hamilton, most recently serving as group head of ILS and sustainability since the start of 2024. Ali has also held risk analyst and modelling roles at Allied World and Montpelier Re.

Other Radix co-founders are general counsel Peter Dunlop and principal software engineer David Berton, with expertise in scalable systems. Ali is hoping to announce some more hires at the beginning of April.

During the interview, Ali expressed excitement about the collaborative, technology-driven model, stating, "Everyone at Radix is tasked with addressing risk and putting capital to work constructively."

“The principle is that we're looking to bring technology to bear to make our processes as efficient as possible, to work with our capital partners, to be insurance investors in so much as we are all putting collectively our capital to work,” Ali explained.

“It's a very, very aligned model. So, everybody who works for Radix has their own capital invested in the strategies that we're going to operate, and we're putting that capital to work to assume risk that we think is going to come with meaningful margin that enables us to generate a good return for our partner capital,” he added.

With venture capital backing from Arbor Ventures, Radix ILS is poised to attract diverse capital providers and expand its investor base.

“Over the past five years, I've spent a lot of time working with investors who have high risk appetites, so they're willing to assume some of the riskier segments of the market that capital, traditional reinsurance capital, has often been fleeing from.

“It's about solving problems in that segment and figuring out what the appropriate margin that is needed to assume that risk so very comfortable continuing to do that. And I would like to think that we will be able to attract capital to support us to do that,” he added.

Ali noted the potential for deployment in upcoming renewals, contingent on the success of the ongoing capital raise.

“This is something we’d potentially like to do,” he said. “But that's very much a function of how quickly we can execute on the capital raise that's in progress. So, yeah, stay tuned,” he concluded.