Exclusive: Amwins seals SRU in-house excess casualty sidecar capacity on MSIG paper

By David Bull

April 15 - (The Insurer) – Amwins is set to launch an excess casualty sidecar through in-house MGA Special Risk Underwriters (SRU) that will allow its brokers to bring additional capacity to placements, with the vehicle expected to extend the wholesale and underwriting platform’s relationship with AM Best A-plus rated MSIG, sources have said.

E&S Insurer first reported in October that Amwins was working on securing additional capacity for its brokers in a rehardening excess casualty market with the creation of a sidecar facility.

According to sources familiar with the situation, the sidecar structure has now been finalized to provide exclusive capacity for Amwins brokers to access.

The facility has been designed to provide follow-form quota share limit alongside carrier markets that are writing lead terms on placements across multiple industry classes of excess casualty business.

The intermediary has identified around 15-20 carriers that the sidecar could support on excess casualty deals, initially allowing brokers to potentially double the capacity they can bring to retail clients.

This is expected to enable Amwins brokers to either fill gaps in placements where markets are contracting capacity or offer more capacity than they originally had.

The facility is not blind follow capacity with each placement going through an underwriting process at the company’s in-house MGA, overseen by Amwins SRU senior vice president Helen Fry, sources said.

Details of the structure and capacity could not be confirmed at the time of publication, but sources linked the sidecar with the AM Best A-plus XV-rated paper of Mitsui Sumitomo’s MSIG USA operation, extending the existing strategic relationship between Amwins and the insurer.

The facility is expected to lean heavily on Amwins data and analytics capabilities. The company has been investing heavily in recent years in its ability to mine underwriting data across its book of brokerage business.

The sources said the new sidecar has been spearheaded by executive vice president Munawar Ali, who leads Amwins product development and incubation and is heavily involved in strategic capacity initiatives.

After starting life with a strong focus on E&S property business to bring exclusive capacity to Amwins brokers, SRU has been broadening its capabilities to provide products in transportation and some areas of management and professional liability.

Meanwhile, in July 2023, MSIG North America and Amwins announced a strategic partnership where the carrier would provide “significant” underwriting capacity for more than 20 programs on the intermediary’s underwriting platform.

At the time, Peter McKenna, CEO of MSIG USA – as it is now known – said the collaboration marked a “noteworthy milestone” in the insurer’s plans to expand its presence in the USA.

Amwins CEO Scott Purviance added that it would support existing business but also provide a “catalyst for new product development."

The imminent launch comes at a time when supply has faced constraints in the U.S. excess casualty insurance market, as incumbent carriers continue to trim line size and tighten their underwriting appetite to counter escalating loss cost trends fueled by social inflation and legal system abuse.

Amwins and MSIG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.