Speaking with Artemis, the leadership of Nephila Capital, one of the world’s largest and longest-standing insurance-linked securities (ILS) managers, explained their focus remains serving investors and being a valued trading partner with cedants.As we , with long-standing Property Catastrophe leader Jessica Laird being promoted to CEO of Nephila Capital, as one of its co-founders, Frank Majors, steps back to focus on portfolio construction.  Fellow Co-founder Greg Hagood will stay on as the sole CEO of Nephila Holdings, with Laura Taylor continuing as President of Nephila Holdings.We spoke with Laird, Majors and Hagood, to explore what these changes mean for the Nephila business.The takeaway from our interview is that the ILS investment strategy at Nephila is all about transparency, collaboration, expertise and innovation to find creative solutions that create value for both investors and cedants.

In a market that has been historically opaque, the leadership is confident their approach is one that allows all partners of Nephila to extract value.New Nephila Capital CEO Laird told us, “We think it’s an interesting time in the market – we see opportunities to solve problems for cedants and generate attractive risk-adjusted returns for our investors, but we aren’t interested in being a commodity capacity provider in areas where we see ample capacity able to service the risk.“However, we still see areas that require more capacity, and our new framework helps our investors understand where their capital is most valued by the market.  We are confident this approach best serves both our investors and our cedants.” Nephila leadership has conviction that increasing transparency is critical to the continued development of the ILS asset class, as ultimately, they believe it will help investors gain greater comfort with the risk over the long term.

Laird added, “In fact, we launched two new funds in 2025 based on this framework, and we are getting good feedback from investors on these products.  We think the better investors understand the risk they are taking, the better we can add value to our cedants, which in turn generates returns for our investors.  At the end of the day, capital is rewarded for helping solve problems, and providing transparency about our risk assessment to both cedants and investors helps all parties enter sustainable, mutually rewarding relationships.” In addition, the Nephila Capital team has spent considerable time working on new business solutions for their investor products in recent years.An important priority has been addressing challenges raised by some of the recent catastrophe loss years and enhancing Nephila’s products to be responsive to investors’ needs, such as capital efficiency, timely liquidity-solutions, and constructing portfolios to fit specific risk-return profiles for its investors.Majors explained, “The period of 2017 to 2022 was challenging and led to investors loss of confidence in the market’s ability to assess risk, in addition to highlighting some issues in the ILS investment structure, particularly relating to post-event liquidity.

We learned a lot through that period and have effectively done a complete rebuild of our platform to incorporate those lessons learned, and Jessica was driving that change through our organisation.“Her leadership, combined with a team of thoughtful, energised talent, brought about a lot of innovation and new developments that our investors will benefit from.“I feel confident as she leads the organisation into the next chapter that the platform is in the best condition it has been.” Hagood went into more detail on the benefits of some of the work undertaken, saying, “Nephila’s products now benefit from efficient balance-sheet leverage, while also providing solutions to help investors get capital back quickly upon redemption.

“The Nephila business now has the benefit of these tools thanks to our parent Markel, but we still operate independently, ensuring we are unconflicted and act as a true fiduciary.” Remember, Nephila is now the sole writer of catastrophe reinsurance in the Markel stable, but has access to balance-sheets and fronting, as well as a sophisticated array of underwriting and investor structures, that can be accessed without significant costs weighing on the returns of the risk underwritten.Hagood also said, “Jessica and the wider team have made meaningful enhancements to increase transparency and insight into our portfolio construction approach, which provides greater disclosure to investors well-beyond the standard exceedance curves.“This allows investors to develop a better understanding and intuition around a portfolio’s experience.” Turning back to new Nephila Capital CEO Laird, we asked for her outlook and how she feels about the firm’s prospects going forwards.

Laird told us, “I’m thrilled to be in this new seat leading Nephila’s catastrophe business and I’m focused on building the business for the long-term.I’m extremely appreciative of the effort our team has put in over the years to bring us to where we are today.“We’re well positioned with a combination of institutional knowledge and experience from our founders and long-tenured leaders, the comprehensive balance-sheet support from our parent company Markel, and a group of talented, dynamic professionals who are as eager as I am to find new ways to bring value to our investors and the market.” “We have a lot of ideas for new opportunities, which we are exploring,” said Laird “We are always looking to embrace change, be adaptable and see how we can do things a bit differently.

This is a driving force for innovation at Nephila and I’m confident that this ethos is going to serve our partners well in 2026 and beyond.” ..All of our Artemis Live insurance-linked securities (ILS), catastrophe bonds and reinsurance can be accessed online.Our can be subscribed to using the typical podcast services providers, including Apple, Google, Spotify and more.