Risk trading insurtech AkinovA donates ILS assets to insurance standards-setting body ACORD

AkinovA, an electronic marketplace for the transfer and trading of re/insurance risks, has donated some insurance-linked security (ILS) assets to ACORD, the global standards-setting body for the insurance industry.

The ILS assets will be available to ACORD members as part of the ACORD Data Standards and Architecture, and include data definitions and collection mechanisms related to cyber and catastrophe risk transfer for the re/insurance marketplace.

AkinovA has also handed over regulator-approved sample contracts and policies which will be used to guide the development of ACORD's Global Reinsurance and Large Commercial Standards, including a modularised contract structure and easily accessible summary of all key price-relevant variables.

AkinovA developed these assets as part of its efforts to grow the overall size of the re/insurance market and create an effective secondary market for the re-trading of re/insurance risks. They bring together third-party news, data and analytics from its users and partners.

"While the industry will always have a need to support bespoke contracts, we can also encourage the use of standard protection instruments by making them more accessible and cost-efficient," said AkinovA Co-founder and CEO Henri Winand. "As a trusted, non-threatening, third-party infrastructure provider to all those who wish to use it, we have been able to rapidly iterate and integrate feedback from a range of competitors happy to share information with us."

ACORD president and CEO Bill Pieroni, added: "In the global insurance ecosystem, standardised data exchange is, and will continue to be, a key enabler of material growth across all lines of business. We were impressed to see that AkinovA truly understands that standards are key to support sustainable, profitable growth. Their efforts to enable a secondary market to trade risk, and to handle more dynamic emerging lines – such as cyber- and climate-related risk – will benefit our members and the clients they serve."

AkinovA expects this library of standard protection instruments to grow to other lines of business across the ILS market and beyond.

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