Aon promotes Towsey to Global Head of Hedge Funds and Diversifying Strategies

Aon, the global professional services, insurance and reinsurance broking firm, has promoted Matthew Towsey to the role of Global Head of Hedge Funds and Diversifying Strategies within its investment advisory and consultancy specialist area of the business.

Towsey has worked at Aon since 2011 and in that time been deeply involved in the firm’s activities around advising institutional investor clients and allocators on a wide-range of asset classes, including the insurance-linked securities (ILS) sector.

He joined Aon as a specialist in liquid alternatives research, with a European focus on hedge funds and commodity funds, before becoming the Principle for the liquid alternatives area, broadening his specialism to include advisory on quant strategies, macro, hybrid and ILS investment opportunities.

In 2021, Towsey became the European Head for Liquid Alternatives at Aon, with advising clients on ILS allocations still part of his remit.

He then became the European Head of Hedge Funds and a Partner at Aon in 2023 and was promoted to the Co-Head of Hedge Funds in 2024.

Now, as the Global Head of Hedge Funds, Towsey takes an even more senior role at the firm, with a broader worldwide remit, leading hedge fund research professionals and overseeing advisory and delegated hedge fund portfolios for allocator clients at Aon.

This team sources, evaluates and monitors hedge fund investment strategies for clients, including opportunities in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) space.

Aon is a key provider of investment consultancy services to large institutional investors and allocators to the ILS asset class, helping clients understand the risks and opportunities within reinsurance-linked investments.

Towsey had commented on the outlook for ILS in 2025 at the beginning of this year.

He stated at that time, “As we say goodbye to 2024 and look ahead to 2025 (with hopefully a few days off in between) we still see a great opportunity in Insurance Linked Securities Markets (“ILS”). Phenomenal returns in 2023 have been followed by another tremendous year, with the asset class again offering double digit returns across all risk profiles.

“Despite extensive activity over the hurricane season, and a fifth consecutive year of $100bn+ insured losses, most strategies have suffered little to no losses, due to the much improved terms and conditions available in the market and a move away from ever increasing secondary perils (outside of the traditional earthquake and hurricane risk.) With yields at historic highs, this has led to ILS offering fantastic resilience and growth for portfolios, on top of the natural diversification that the strategy brings.

“The good news is that the opportunity persists. While yields have tightened to some extent, the public markets still offer ‘no loss’ yields above 10%, with the private markets an even more attractive proposition for 2025. We have helped a number of clients allocate, or increase allocations to the space in 2023 and 2024 and I look forward to continuing the conversations in 2025. High coupons, natural diversification to traditional assets and increased resilience should be on every investor’s wishlist at this time of year.”

Prior to joining Aon, Towsey had spent time working in investment research and advisory positions at Fitzwilliam Asset Management and BDO LLP