Baden-Baden Reinsurance Meeting hosts usually up to 3,000 European and international industry specialists and experts meet at various venues in the city centre of Baden-Baden to discuss the renewal of contracts in individual meetings with their clients and partners and carry out risk assessments, prior to the peak renewal and new business period in January. The focus of the decentralised event is on individual exchange in personal discussions and meetings organised by the delegates themselves. Therefore, only professionals, who belong to the narrowly defined target group of reinsurance and insurance companies, insurance brokers, cedents as well as experts from the corresponding scientific fields and technology service providers are admitted as delegates.
The number of people travelling to the meeting rose steadily, so that Insurance Day joined forces with the city council of Baden-Baden to form a host committee dedicated to protecting the annual Baden-Baden Reinsurance Meeting. It is supported by industry representatives from the reinsurance and insurance sector.
Saying the above, it is important to note that with an academic background in economics and quantitative methods, renowned Semih Aksoy specialized in risk management and holds a Master’s degree in Insurance and Management from the University of Strasbourg.
He began his career as an actuarial and statistical analyst in the group risk department at Covéa. There, he developed a steering tool for lobbying activities by automating statistical studies and creating a platform designed to anticipate the impact of upcoming prudential regulations. Within the team, he was also the reference point for systemic risk. He played a significant role in discussions with regulatory authorities.
Semih then joined AXA Luxembourg as a non-life actuary, where he oversaw the migration of actuarial reports, improved reporting processes, and optimized actuarial reserving methods.
Afterward, he joined CAAREA, an MGA and Insurtech company, as head of actuarial and internal processes. He developed a range of mobility-related insurance products and contributed to the creation of a new pricing tool. He also worked on managing and improving the company’s internal processes.
For CAAREA’s South Korean subsidiary, he designed tools and optimized the working environment for claims managers.
He collaborated closely with SCOR’s actuaries and underwriters to price, reserve, and monitor claims.
Next, as a non-life actuarial consultant within WTW’s Insurance Consulting & Technology (ICT) division, Semih worked on various actuarial topics, including reviewing best practices (pricing, reserving, risk) for the largest MGA in Italy, where he served as a project management officer. He also played a key role as ICT France Ambassador, promoting innovation, strategy, and collaboration among international teams.
Building on these experiences, Semih Aksoy founded Helios Re, an MGA and Insurtech company dedicated to covering photovoltaic energy risks.
Helios Re, by developing innovative insurance solutions, supports and promotes the energy transition. The company’s insurance solutions protect photovoltaic panel users against their specific risks.
Semih Aksoy, Founder and CEO of Helios Re, France sat down for an interview with BUSINESS LIFE in Baden-Baden. Aksoy, who founded Helios Re, with a new concept to insure MGA and Insurtech, had just begun his innovative and unique business to insure the photovoltaic ecosystem. He discussed his company’s insurance solutions to protect photovoltaic panel users against their specific risks.
BL: Would you provide me with the profile of Helios Re? What are its objectives, its mission, and its futuristic plans?
Semih Aksoy: Helios Re is newly established and it is based in France.
BL: Semih, would you please introduce me to your profile and to your company’s background?
Semih Aksoy: I’m Semih Aksoy, CEO and founder of Helios Re. Helios Re is an MGA and insurtech specialized in photovoltaics and solar risks, and its aim is to accompany policyholders, insurers and reinsurers, to face the development and the massive growth of all photovoltaic installations around the world. Helios Re would like to offers services tailored to all players in the photovoltaic sector..
Helios Re’s photovoltaic production insurance product is designed to strengthen and complement customers’ sales journey, guarantee their income from the resale of electricity and protect the electricity purchase expenses.
BL: Why did you choose to have your company’s headquarters in France?
Semih Aksoy: Basically, we chose France because I’m French. Mainly, my relations are also French, and so it was easier for us to start with France, as we know the regulations and the environment. And that’s why we based the company today at Strasbourg, where I am from, and next we are seeking to move to Paris or Zurich in Switzerland.
BL: Semih, who are the major shareholders?
Semih Aksoy: Today, the major shareholders is me and my associate, who is a lawyer in Luxembourg. Thus, we are still seeking for investors and insurance license and risk carrier, but as today we are composed of two persons. But this is a big start to have only two shareholders. This is a big challenge. There are a lot of opportunities. There are a lot of risks related to solar energies. Insurers and re-insurers are not ready yet. This is the feeling I had recently throughout my networking with various participants during Baden-Baden Reinsurance Meeting. Our goal is to seek investors to accompany us to develop a company to be the expert and professional on this kind of risk and then help insurers and re-insurers to cover this kind of risk and accompany the world to the ecological transition.
BL: You started Helios Re only five months ago, right?
Semih Aksoy: Yes. At the moment, Helios Re is not registered. We sent everything required to the French regulator, but we are working on it since about one year. So, we have developed our first product and our platform HeliosRate as BETA version. And we are still continuing working and developing relations, talking to re-insurers and also consulting firms to really build a vision and ambition for the photovoltaic installations around the world.
BL: Subsequently, are you merely at the final stage of the registration?
Semih Aksoy: Exactly. The company is in the registeration process.
BL: During Baden-Baden Reinsurance Meeting, reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter emphasised partnership and innovation while on the reinsurer side, Swiss Re’s Group CEO Andreas Berger emphasised the resilient nature of the reinsurance industry as a whole, what are your comments and did you benefit from this symposium?
Semih Aksoy: Laurent Rousseau, Guy Carpenter’s CEO of EMEA and Global Capital Solutions and other CEOs talked about current topics, about the data and about the climate catastrophes. Sometimes, especially on the use of the data, I agree with Swiss Re Group CEO Andreas Berger who has issued a rallying cry for the reinsurance sector to forge ahead with the exchange of risk data and information, while repeating a call for the industry to address loss creep, even if he underlined that insurer data belong to insurer and reinsurer data belong to reinsurer. But now it’s also to understand how we are using this data. So, everybody, during the symposium, did not talk about the use of the data. And this is something that we have to go further, understand how we use it, because if you give the data to 10 actuaries, you will have 10 different prices. And one year after, when you look at the reality and your pricing, one could be right.
BL: What do you think of the challenges that will face Helios Re?
Semih Aksoy: Therefore, as we’re covering photovoltaic installation, photovoltaic farms, our main difficulty is to cover that against natural catastrophes like hail storm, because if a storm goes on the solar farm, it will cause a lot of damages. And this is the kind of issues that reinsurers are meeting today.
BL: 2024 has been a very critical year, especially regarding the political instability in all the world which drove instability in the economy. We have seen that despite the USA banks dropped the interest rate, the gold prices are still rising up. You as a prominent reinsurer, how this rise in gold prices and the drop in interest rate will impact your clients and your business?
Semih Aksoy: We’re not resinsurer, we’re a MGA. At this stage, this is not something that we have studied, but I can talk about a point that you said, it’s more the political risks in our businesses. For example, I can tell you in France, we have the Front National, which is a French far-right political party, described as right-wing populist and nationalist and they are totally against all the renewable energy and we are afraid if they take over the government in France, for example, the installation of photovoltaics will decrease. So, we are more concerned about this kind of issue because we are expecting that photovoltaic installation grows and we wanted to provide protection to all owners. And if all political decisions go against the new renewable energy then this means that it goes against us.
BL: What are your plans regarding energy and aviation?
Semih Aksoy: So, today in our world, as you can see, I’m a young entrepreneur, we have old people, who are more traditional, and we have young people, who are more interested about the climate change and the environment crisis. And we are seeking a solution to change our way of consumption and production of energy. We need to change our consumption habits, and shifting our energy supplies to more sustainable ones are one of the main changes we must make if we are going to reduce our consumption levels. So, for example, by switching from non-renewable energy sources like oil, natural gas, and coal to renewable energy is made possible by technological advancements, like wind energy, solar energy, etc. And this is how we see the future. And we at Helios Re want to build this ambition to provide insurance and encourage people to install this kind of installation and to make owners safe.
BL: What are your comments regarding the private or direct insurance companies and the brokers who are your customers?
Semih Aksoy: We have started by developing a parametric solar insurance, which indemnifies electricity output shortage per annum due to lack of solar irradiance, it’s based on a solar irradiation index.. Our goal is to encourage and motivate people by telling them, OK, install this photovoltaics. We are working with insurers and brokers to cover you. And our goal is, for example, to provide this kind of coverage by making it envisaged to the home insurance, to the funding of your installation.
We also would like to make it embedded. For example, for a residential property, when you will buy your house, you will install solar panels on your roof. So, it will be automatically integrated on your financing solution or in your home insurance.
So broker, insurance companies have to thrust us to protect their customers.
BL: What about the AI, Artificial Intelligence, how is it going to assist your company? And what about the data?
Semih Aksoy: Parametric insurance is growing rapidly – by as much as 11% annually – particularly in sectors like agriculture and natural catastrophe coverage. Consequently, to make parametric insurance, we are using satellite data. Satellite data combined with digital elevation models can improve flood risk modelling. Space data sourced from satellites can be used to create parametric insurance plans that can forecast climate risk and deliver payouts much more efficiently. This data, so there are a lot of pictures which are modelling the irradiance, cloud, humidity, pollution, etc. And as today, there are many climatologists, scientists who are modelling. AI, Artificial Intelligence can change it, improve the way that we are modelling this kind of observation and then, improve our quality of data and then, we improve our pricing.
BL: How insurance and reinsurance companies can protect their data from cyber attacks?
Semih Aksoy: It’s very complicated. Today, cyber risks are emerging risks. We are using more and more technologies, more and more connected information. An insurer should secure its data. It’s depending on its local installation, local infrastructure and IT infrastructure. Therefore, if an insurer is not really protected, infrastructure is not protected. Subsequently, maybe tomorrow, we can find in the dark web insurer’s data and we can bounce it. I don’t suggest to do it, but we have to be careful with that. Accordingly, it’s really a matter of the quality of the infrastructure of each insurer and each reinsurer. But if you look at the cyber risk itself, it’s very difficult to provide coverage because it’s very hard to define the limit of the coverage for a company, the amount of the future claims and the probabilities.
BL: Semih, what are your expansion plans?
Semih Aksoy: The ecological transition is a worldwide concern. Consequently, we’re starting by France because we have to prove that we are trustworthy. We have knowledge. We know how reinsurance and insurance work. We know pricing works and claim management. But we have to go and move on quickly to all the markets. So first, France, then top five countries in Europe. Accordingly, Germany, Spain, Italy and Netherlands. And then when we have proved our quality of work, then we can go to all the world.
BL: What’s the first region for expansion?
Semih Aksoy: So, we have to be realistic. China today has more than 30% of the total photovoltaic installation. China will reach almost 1 terawatt of solar installed capacity by the end of 2025. If I remember well, it’s about 600 or 700 gigawatts on a total of 2,000 gigawatts in the world. Therefore, it represents almost 30%. So, China will be one of our targets. But China is a tough market. Yes, it’s a tough market and it’s great because I worked three years there for an MGA and I was specialized on another risk in Chinese market , which was a motorized warranty and affinity products related to the transportation. Consequently, a very ambitious plan. So, I’m not thinking about Helios Re as my company or someone else’s company. It’s more about a vision. It’s an ambition. I’m doing it for the world. Maybe tomorrow, I will have, I don’t know, less than 1% of the share of the company. But the idea is to implicate everybody, every stakeholder of the insurance industry and to move, as all our speakers said yesterday, partnership and doing a better world.
BL: Semih, does Saudi Arabia exist in your plan?
Semih Aksoy: Saudi Arabia, why not? Solar panels are still relatively unpopular. People are thinking that you just need sun. It’s not right. You need sun and a temperature which is correct with a wind speed which is also good to freeze your solar panels because the sun will hit them. Consequently, you need all these parameters to make an optimal production, an optimal use of your solar panels. Everybody thinks by putting them in the Sahara Desert, etc., it’s the best idea, but it’s not. Also, we have to cover projects which are important to the world. We aren’t seeking to protect projects which is not ecologically smart. So, Saudi Arabia could be within our scope. We have to study it and think about it. But today, it’s not the market that we are thinking of. It’s maybe in our global strategy.
BL: What about UAE, Dubai?
Semih Aksoy: Same remarks. Same thing.
BL: What about Turkey?
Semih Aksoy: I had the chance to talk with many brokers in Turkey. They are really interested by this kind of product and this project because Turkey would like to move on this kind of source of energy. They’re still working with coal and gas, but both people and government know, it’s a solution to adopt. We have to think about other solutions to produce our energy.
BL: How are you starting from a parametric insurance to then providing traditional insurance and how as new comers that nobody knows about are you going to gain trust?
Semih Aksoy: Okay, so first, we started with something which is basically easy for me as an actuary to calculate and to make a parametric insurance. Thus, using a third-party data provider, we calculate this parametric insurance and then we can monitor and give an indication of the claims of a policyholder. Once we understand how the project is growing around the world and specifically for all the region, we can show that we understand the product, we understand the risk, we know that all solar panels work, we can move on, seek new ventures capital to hire new actuary, new climatologist, new Scientifics and then develop special products for this kind of risks. It will be very hard,. butSo, we have our roadmap. We have to just stay on the way. I know it’s hurting, but we have to stay on our way and then when we get the opportunity, we get the confidence, we can move and increase our scope.
BL: What did you benefit from your presence as a new company in Baden-Baden Reinsurance Congress?
Semih Aksoy: So as today, we do not have any positive things. We are nobody for everybody.
BL: No, you are somebody.
Semih Aksoy: I am somebody, but an uncountable somebody. So, we are just sharing the project to people. We understand that everybody here is making business. We also want to make business because we have people who have family to feed. But we are working for the future of the world. We are acting for their children and their families. And this is something that I want to share with people, saying, hey, we are Helios Re. We want to say that photovoltaics is a solution. There are risks that you are afraid of and if you are afraid, trust us, help us with partnerships, together, we can do something. And also, an international consulting firm is helping me to find insurers, re-insurers, and clients to start these projects.
We can increase price, we can decrease price, risk will come and claims will come. We can always adjust, make money, lose money by mutualizing with the time. You will earn money. It’s our job. We know how to do that. The question is how we prevent disasters. This is what they’re talking yesterday. This is about how we prevent that. So, we can increase price by 10% - 15% and finally, people will pay. But tomorrow, we have issues, there are risks which is not insurable. It’s too costly. And how do we deal with that? I think it’s the main concern of the reinsurance. Reinsurance exists since maybe two centuries, maybe more. Insurance starts with people who were selling fish and who needed to cover their boats. Human is very smart. He knows how to improve, how to correct things. So more resilient companies or people will survive, increase their pricing. But it’s just a problem of a year. What Helios Re is concerned about, it’s a problem about the human survival. And honestly speaking, even yesterday, we talked in the panel discussion, we talked about the floods and the big storms that hit recently USA in California. And they said about the losses in 2023 of natural hazards and so. So, nature is really savage when especially it’s going to hit the reinsurance. we are in the world, reinsurance has data of the world with parameters. And we are changing the parameter of the world. So, we don’t know what is awaiting us. We are changing the parameter; we are changing the rule of the earth. So, we can’t say we will manage this because we did it in the past.
