Markel Corporation has announced it will be winding down Lodgepine Capital Management Limited, its Bermuda-based retrocessional insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund manager.
Markel launched Lodgepine in 2019, with product offerings focused on property catastrophe retrocessional investments.
Within the past year, the ILS fund manager wrote a portfolio of property retrocessional business that consisted of approximately $230 million of initial limits.
The Lodgepine Fund launched in July of this year, with an initial investor capital of $98.9 million, which included an initial investment by Markel of $18.9 million.
The re/insurer says that in spite of best efforts and in light of headwinds in the retro ILS market, including a challenging fundraising environment, Lodgepine will cease to write any new business and commence the orderly run-off of its existing portfolio and the return of capital to investors.
The company explains that it has entered into a consultation period with Lodgepine’s 18 employees and will look for redeployment opportunities for these employees within Markel’s operations.
