ASR has been operating in Mauritius for nearly three years now, what have been your main achievements?
Africa Specialty Risks (ASR) is a reinsurance business focused on providing risk mitigating insurance solutions to the Corporate and Specialty market in Africa and the Middle East. Established in August 2020, the company provides global capacity and expertise to emerging markets. By the end of 2020, we launched our MGA and a fully capitalised and licensed reinsurer in Mauritius and an MGA in the UK.
The scope of ASR’s coverage touches all the key sectors of the Mauritian economy, including Hospitality, Financial Services, Real Estate, Trading, Infrastructure, Transport and Logistics. At the group level, ASR has been actively involved in risk mitigation across 49 African countries and an increasing number of Middle Eastern countries through our nine lines of business, resulting in USD 22 billion of exposure. A significant portion of risk mitigation in Africa has been facilitated through our Mauritius Reinsurer.
How has setting up in Mauritius benefitted Africa Speciality Risks?
Mauritius has proven invaluable to us as a business domicile, as a central hub for Africa, with a highly educated bilingual population and established insurance industry. The island’s naturally bilingual population has allowed us to operate effectively across Anglophone and Francophone countries, and its educated population has provided us with a highly skilled diligent workforce. It has enabled us to serve the needs of our clients and grow rapidly. The fact that Mauritius was already an established insurance hub has made it easier to recruit talented professionals and to provide training for the reinsurance skills essential for our operations as a reinsurer.
We greatly appreciate the support of the Mauritian institutions, which have enabled our first two years here to run smoothy.
What opportunities have you identified in the African reinsurance and insurance market?
Rapid expansion is predicted for the African (re)insurance market with the second fastest growth forecast in the world after South America. It is growing nearly twice as fast as North America and over three times faster than Europe. The region even outperforms Asia, with 7% year on year growth. We see this as an opportunity, in collaboration with our clients, to enhance the insurance and reinsurance penetration across Africa and close the capacity gap on the continent for Corporate and Specialty (re)insurance business.
To this end, we collaborate closely with both local and international insurance and reinsurance firms, leveraging our unique co-insurance model. In addition to our own reinsurers in Bermuda and Mauritius, we have entered into partnership agreements to underwrite on behalf of Africa Re, Société Centrale De Réassurance (Morocco), GIC of India, Atrium (a Lloyd’s syndicate) and Ocean Re.
What type of solutions is ASR providing to the market and in which countries?
We provide risk mitigating solutions across the African continent including the surrounding islands. ASR offers capacity across Property, Construction, Political Risk, Trade Credit, Energy, Liability, Political Violence and Terrorism, and Parametric with further lines of business being developed.
In 2023, we launched a captive solution offering, an end-to-end solution that includes establishing, managing and administering the captive, while deploying our own capacity and sharing risk with the captive owner. The captive solution enables corporates and financial institutions to have greater control and flexibility over their insurance programmes.
Our business development hubs are in multiple African countries, including Morocco and Kenya. We plan to establish hubs in South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria, as well as opening an office in Dubai later this year to service our growing Middle Eastern business and the African-Middle Eastern corridor.
What sets Africa Specialty Risks apart from existing players on the market?
Our unique co-reinsurance partnership model involves collaborating with international and local reinsurers to provide greater corporate and specialty risk mitigation capacity to African businesses and their investors. In addition, we offer bespoke risk mitigating products that are not generally available to the continent.
Another example is Parametric insurance, which guarantees a direct payout after a qualifying event, offers a means to mitigate against unpredictable external risks in a way that traditional insurance products cannot. This is an example of the multiple specialty products that ASR is developing for its clients.
What have been the benefits to Mauritius of ASR domiciling its Reinsurer in the country?
We believe that ASR being based in Mauritius has been mutually beneficial to both parties. The support from the Government has been excellent, and from our hub we have been able to achieve our goal of providing that extra insurance capacity that is still very much needed in Africa. ASR’s active operations in the country have supported the Mauritian Government's aim of being the preferred route for investment activities into Africa.
Since day one, we have focused on investing and upskilling local Mauritian employees, providing enhanced employment and training opportunities to our existing work force of 32 employees, and growing. As a result, we have expanded our office space. We have become an active member of the business community in Mauritius, generating income for local service providers, local banks and other local infrastructure as well as playing a full role in the local area. While our investment management activities are global in nature, Mauritius is at the absolute centre of what we do, contributing towards making Mauritius a leading reinsurance hub in Africa and facilitating access to previously untapped markets.
