Soames joins Conduit Re’s ESG arm

Nicholas Soames, the British former member of parliament who served as Minister for the Armed Services, has joined the newly established Conduit Foundation, which will engage in social and environmental projects on behalf of Conduit Re.

Soames joined Conduit less than two months after the reinsurer commenced underwriting business. Neil Eckert, executive chairman at Conduit Re, said the business “has got off to a flying start,” with “a top class management and underwriting team” now firmly in place.

“It is an exciting time to be building a new reinsurance business and we couldn't have asked for a better beginning to the establishment of Conduit as a new breed of reinsurer,” Eckert said.

Conduit shared its first results for the period ended 31 December, 2020, a period in which it has not yet started underwriting business, in which it made an after tax loss of $4.6 million. It is confident that future results announcements will give its shareholders plenty to cheer about.

Elaine Whelan, Conduit Re’s chief financial officer, noted the financial statements for the period from incorporation to 31 December 2020 include mostly the expenses from its IPO and operating expenses from its first month of setting up the business.

“While it will take some time for us to fully build out our underwriting book, and therefore fully deploy our capital, we are focused on risk selection and will maintain a balanced approach,” said Whelan. “Conduit is an underwriting business, first and foremost, and that is rightly where our principal focus is. Capital preservation and liquidity will, therefore, remain the primary objective of our investment strategy in order to support our underwriting goals."

Trevor Carvey, chief executive and chief underwriting officer at Conduit, said the build out of Conduit Re’s underwriting portfolio is going according to plan.

“We are the beneficiaries of attractive and improving market conditions in the classes of business we are targeting, which allows us to remain highly selective in the way we deploy our capital,” Carvey said.

Hard market conditions are increasingly permeating into the reinsurance markets, Carvey said, a trend he expects to continue. “We have been more focused initially on taking a pro-rata share of primary insurance via the underwriting of quota share reinsurance treaties rather than on excess of loss in our early trading,” he said. “However, we still expect to deliver a balanced portfolio across all classes and territories and we look forward to the upcoming April and mid-year renewals with optimism."