London-based AkinovA represents itself as “the electronic marketplace for the transfer and trading of risk.” Founded in 2017 by Henri Winand and Jean-Michel Paul, the first trade on the platform—a cyber parametric instrument developed and structured by Hiscox with Guy Carpenter as the broker—was completed in January 2020.
Executive Summary
A tradeable market for cyber risk opened up early this year, when London-based AkinovA announced the first such transaction covering the risk of a cyber event disrupting power generation assets in the United States. Here, AkinovA Co-Founder Henri Winand tells CM Guest Editor David Bradford why capacity for cyber needs to expand to the capital markets, how cover-triggering indexes can be tailored to different types of cyber events—and for more risks, such as pandemics and political risks. He also describes the prospect of creating real-time insurance securities for wildfires and other nat cats that are simpler than those that exist today.Q: Explain AkinovA.
Winand: AkinovA is an independent—and it’s important to say independent—regulated venue to transfer and trade insurance risk. That’s the summary tagline…It’s a one-stop shop with all the tools that you need to match capital to risk, with brokers essentially making sure that the right instrument is for the right people.
Over time, we see AkinovA evolving into a digital ecosystem: one where brokers and users can draw from modular contracts, which can be easily priced and quickly assembled into tradeable instruments by insurers, reinsurers and capital markets; one [that will] work in tandem with service providers such as actuaries and model providers, interfacing with the marketplace to build a true ecosystem; one where insureds, brokers, underwriting capacity providers and other marketplace ecosystem members are better served within a world where the risk environment has become increasingly more dynamic and global.
