Howden Re launches Novark investment platform

Howden Re has launched Novark, a Bermuda-based insurance management and securities administration platform designed to give institutional investors greater access to insurance risk through capital markets-style infrastructure.

The platform, Novark, will provide near real-time information on insurance investments, which Howden Re said will give investors greater transparency and control over their positions and allow them to manage investments more actively.

Its launch comes as insurance-linked securities (ILS) and other forms of alternative capital play an increasingly important role in global reinsurance capacity. Howden Re said that while the structures used to invest in insurance risk have become more sophisticated, the infrastructure supporting them has failed to keep pace, leaving data and processes fragmented across participants and systems.

Novark aims to address that gap by bringing investors, insurers, reinsurers and other participants into a single digital environment with more consistent and timely data.

“Insurance risk has developed into an increasingly important institutional asset class, but the infrastructure around it has not evolved at the same pace,” said Razi Naqvi (pictured), currently chief innovation officer at Howden Re, who is leading the platform’s development and implementation.

“If we want to attract more capital into the market, investors need the transparency, control and confidence they expect when investing elsewhere.”

Naqvi said Novark would provide investors with near real-time information on how their insurance investments are performing.

“Investors should be able to see what is happening to their investment, understand it and act on it,” he said.

The platform will operate through Novark Management, a Bermuda-incorporated insurance management and securities administration company currently known as Alternative Risk Management (Bermuda).

It will support institutional investors, ILS funds, insurers, reinsurers, brokers and other market participants, combining insurance and securities expertise with the technology platform. It will also draw on Howden’s wider reinsurance, analytics, ILS, capital markets and advisory capabilities.

Alex Bridges, CEO of Howden Re Bermuda, said making insurance risk easier to access and manage could unlock greater institutional participation.

“Alternative capital is already fundamental to the reinsurance market, but there is a much bigger opportunity if we can make insurance risk easier for institutional investors to access, understand and manage,” he said.

Novark is designed to support both established and more innovative risk-transfer structures, while allowing Howden to work with clients across the lifecycle from advisory and structuring through administration, governance and reporting.

Bridges said Bermuda was the “natural place” to develop the platform because of its existing convergence of reinsurance, ILS and institutional capital.

“Novark gives us an opportunity to help take that convergence to the next stage,” he said.

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