Michel Liès, chief executive officer of Swiss Re, has called upon re/insurers to invest more into infrastructure projects in an effort to boost returns.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum event at the Swiss town of Davos, Liès told Bloomberg that there was a perfect potential matchup between the money that insurers have to invest and the infrastructure needs that exist all over the world.
Market regulators could "define infrastructure investment as a specified class which allows a secondary market and which allows investors who can invest long term to have an investment that is liquid during the time of investment," Liès said.
Liès has talked before about the need for re/insurers to invest in infrastructure in an effort to boost income at a time of low interest rates and poor returns, and has even criticised his own firm for not doing enough on this (see IAR, 15 October, Swiss Re's infrastructure allocation is "ridiculously low" says CEO).
In November 2014 Swiss Re said that it had posted net investment income of $1bn based on the sale of equities and increased income from its fixed-interest portfolio (see IAR, 7 November, Swiss Re reports flat investment returns).
And in December 2014 it was reported that the European Parliament was poised to ask the Commission to adopt an additional Solvency II delegated act setting lower capital charges for insurers investing in infrastructure (see IAR, 18 December, MEPs want additional delegated act for infrastructure investments).