Institutional

LGIM has launched its first Luxembourg-domiciled fund, aimed at international institutional investors, to expand its private markets strategy. It’s called ‘Staff’, or short term alternative finance fund. LGIM’s head of private credit Nick Bamber spoke to Investment Officer.

Appetite for Luxembourg life insurance products declined significantly last year, according to the annual reports that the two largest unit-linked insurance firms, Lombard International and OneLife, posted this week.

Luxembourg’s Commissariat aux Assurances (CAA) slapped Lombard International Assurance with a record 1.68 million euro fine for lapses in its anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) controls. This enforcement action underscores the regulator’s stringent stance on compliance in the financial sector.

Europe’s top supervisory body for the insurance sector on Thursday launched a new climate disaster data initiative that will help supervisors, the industry and policy makers better understand insurance exposures and losses from climate and nature related catastrophes.

It’s called the Catastrophe Data Hub. The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, known as Eiopa, said the hub is an open-source collection of catastrophe risk data at European level.  

The rapid adoption of technology in Luxembourg’s insurance industry is reshaping competitive dynamics, with non-users facing increasing disadvantages. Discussions at Thursday’s ACA Insurance Day 2023 highlighted the critical impact of technologies like cloud computing and artificial intelligence on the sector.

This week’s overview of transfers in the fund and asset management sector includes appointments at Axa Investment Managers, Allianz Global Investors, Alter Domus and Linklaters.

Bruno Valersteinas has been formally appointed as Chief Executive Officer at OneLife per 1 August, replacing Antonio Corpas who passed away due to an accident in January.

OneLife said that Valersteinas’ appointment has been approved by the Commissariat aux Assurances, the supervisor for Luxembourg’s insurance sector. He formally takes on the role as CEO and dirigeant agréé, or authorised manager. 

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, known as Eiopa, on Monday published its Insurance Risk Dashboard for the first half of 2023. This assessment showed macroeconomic exposures as the most significant concerns at this time. 

Luxembourg life assurance and wealth management company OneLife has been fined 580,000 euro by the country’s insurance supervisor Commissariat aux Assurances (CAA) after “certain failures” were detected in the firm’s anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism (AML-CFT) systems.

The European Central Bank and the EU’s top insurance body have warned that businesses and households are not sufficiently insured against climate-related disasters, raising the risk of financial instability and economic crises. A discussion paper issued this week argued that catastrophe bonds should play a bigger role in bridging the overall climate insurance gap, while national and European authorities need to encourage uptake of policies to prevent such crises from occurring.