Frank Gillis

Frank L. "Chip" Gillis is a veteran life-and-annuity insurance and reinsurance executive based in Bermuda. He was a co-founder of Athene Holding Ltd. in 2009, having spent roughly two years before that raising the capital that led to Athene being formed and licensed in Bermuda in July 2009. He served as Chief Executive Officer and a board member of Athene Life Re Ltd. (ALRe) — Athene's reinsurance subsidiary — building it into a market leader and completing reinsurance agreements with nearly two dozen third-party cedents. His relationships and expertise were credited by Athene CEO Jim Belardi with enabling the company to be founded and domiciled in Bermuda.

Before Athene, Gillis was a Senior Managing Director at Bear Stearns & Company, where he led the firm's Insurance Solutions Group and spearheaded Bear Stearns' entry into funding-agreement-backed notes, developing the "PATS" program. Earlier, he spent over three years at GenRe Financial Products providing asset-liability management (ALM) hedging solutions to U.S. life insurance companies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Richmond.

Gillis announced his retirement as CEO of Athene Life Re in June 2019 (effective end of 2019), after which he transitioned to Executive Chairman of the ALRe board and served as a board member of the Athene Co-Invest Reinsurance Affiliate (ACRA), a ~$3 billion third-party-capital "sidecar" vehicle for life and retirement risk. He has since returned to operating leadership as Co-Founder and CEO of ARCUS Ltd., a Bermuda-based insurance services and technology platform serving L&A insurers and reinsurers. Under ARCUS, ARCUS Holdings Inc. acquired Investors Life Insurance Company of North America (effective July 1, 2024), establishing a U.S. life insurance operating company, with Gillis as its Chairman & CEO.

Gillis has been active in the Bermuda industry and civic community, holding board roles including Catalina Holdings (Bermuda) Ltd., the Bermuda International Long Term Insurers and Reinsurers Association (BILTIR), the Association of Bermuda International Companies (ABIC), and the Board of Governors of Bermuda College.

• His documented "capital" work is institutional life-reinsurance and third-party capital, not venture/angel investing. The ACRA sidecar he helped lead brings outside investors into life and retirement risk on a pro-rata basis with a defined ten-year exit horizon.
• He emphasizes investor certainty and transparency: *"Investors want to know when is their exit and what does it look like"* — citing ACRA's built-in exit strategy as a competitive advantage.
• He stresses operational efficiency and infrastructure leverage: investors benefit from an established risk team, producing *"a lower expense factor, because we've got a full risk team."*
• His current focus through ARCUS is technology-enabled modernization of life & annuity insurers/reinsurers and building a turnkey U.S. life insurance operating platform — an operator/builder posture rather than a passive investor one.
• No public record was found of Gillis making angel or seed-stage startup investments; the source data labeling him an "Angel Investor / Seed Round" investor appears to be a mis-tag and should be treated with caution.