Lee Robinson targets major insurers for collapse amid private credit risks

Lee Robinson is back at the doomsday trade. The founder of London-based hedge fund Altana Wealth, who famously turned a $20 million short position on subprime mortgages into $200 million before the 2008 financial crisis, is now placing bearish bets against some of the biggest names in the insurance industry.

His target: the $1.8 trillion private credit market, and the insurers who have gorged on it.

The 2008 playbook, updated

Altana Wealth has increased its positions against major insurers through credit default swaps, essentially insurance policies that pay out when the underlying entity runs into trouble. The firm’s targets include MetLife, Lincoln National, and Berkshire Hathaway, three companies with significant exposure to private credit assets.

Net notional CDS bets on US insurers have swelled to $5.5 billion as of May 22, 2026. That figure was under $4.9 billion at the end of 2025, meaning roughly $600 million in additional bearish positioning has piled in over the first five months of this year.

Why insurers are the canary

Since 2020, insurers have aggressively expanded their private credit portfolios, fueled by low interest rates and regulatory frameworks that made these investments attractive from a capital perspective.

Robinson has likened the current low-volatility environment to August 2008, the month before Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Altana Wealth is also preparing to launch a dedicated tail-protection fund designed to hedge against three specific risks: stress in private credit, a cooling artificial intelligence boom, and deteriorating liquidity conditions across markets.

What Robinson’s 2008 track record means for this bet

Robinson’s credibility on this type of trade is difficult to dismiss. His 900% return shorting subprime mortgages before the last crisis puts him in a very small club of investors who correctly identified systemic risk before the rest of the market caught on.

The CDS market itself is telling a story. When net notional positions against an entire sector jump by more than $600 million in five months, it suggests Robinson isn’t the only one seeing ghosts of 2008.

What this means for crypto investors

Historical patterns are instructive here. The March 2020 COVID crash saw Bitcoin drop roughly 50% in a single day, not because anything changed about Bitcoin’s fundamentals, but because institutional investors liquidated everything to cover margin calls and raise cash.

Despite his historical engagement with cryptocurrencies, Altana Wealth’s current focus remains firmly within the credit and insurance derivative sectors, showing no direct connection to the crypto market in this instance.

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