SageSure takes stake in Bermuda ILS manager Pillar Capital

SageSure has taken a strategic investment in Pillar Capital Management, the Bermuda-based insurance-linked securities manager with more than $4 billion in institutional assets under management, Insurance Business America reported.

SageSure funded the investment by expanding an existing debt facility with Ares Management; the price and size of the stake were not disclosed. Howden Capital Markets & Advisory advised SageSure on the transaction, and Evercore advised Pillar.

Pillar will continue as an independent business, keeping its Bermuda team and investment strategy unchanged, and its management will retain a substantial ownership stake. Longtime chief executive and chief investment officer Stephen Velotti and chief operating officer Tara Railton remain in charge. Pillar was founded in 2008 and allocates capital across reinsurance, retrocession, catastrophe bonds and industry loss warranties.

SageSure said the investment adds Pillar's reinsurance underwriting and its relationships with institutional investors to its platform, broadening its capabilities across the property catastrophe value chain and connecting its underwriting with more capital sources. In return, SageSure will supply Pillar with its risk-level insights, analytics and technology. SageSure president and chief executive Terrence McLean said Pillar's focus on technical underwriting and prudent risk management matched SageSure's own principles.

SageSure is a Jersey City-based managing general underwriter that writes coastal homeowners programs for agents and carrier partners in 16 states. It says it protects nearly 1 million policyholders and manages more than $3 billion of in-force premium. Capacity for that book runs through carriers and the reinsurers behind them.

In February, SageSure and SURE closed the $670 million Gateway Re 2026-1 catastrophe bond, which the company described as the largest issuance in the franchise and the first to broaden it significantly beyond named storms. A $175 million Gateway Re 2026-2 bond with Auros and a $200 million Seawall Re II sidecar followed in March. SageSure said the deals put outstanding notional limit across its supported franchises at $3.1 billion, which it described as making it the third-largest catastrophe bond sponsor in the world, and that its programs and carrier partners expect to secure about $7 billion of first-event reinsurance limit this year.

The equity sits with an operating company rather than a rollup sponsor, and it is being paid for with borrowed money.