14 years of Artemis, $49 billion worth of catastrophe bond & ILS deals

On the 12th of May 1999 an internet portal was launched in front of an audience of reinsurance and investment executives in Bermuda. The website launched with a noble goal of raising the profile of what was a new and growing piece of the risk transfer and reinsurance puzzle, removing the mystery that existed in this new market and offering this market and its participants a new home on the internet. That internet portal was Artemis.

Now, fourteen years later, please indulge me as I take a few minutes of your time to celebrate what Artemis and the market it covers has achieved in that time.

When Artemis launched its aim was to focus on the recently emerged insurance securitization and catastrophe bond market as well as the equally new and innovative market in weather derivatives. When I built, researched, furnished with content and launched the very first version of Artemis, for my incredible and forward-thinking employer at the time WIRE Ltd., I saw the cat bond market and ‘alternative risk transfer’ as the most exciting new innovation in the reinsurance and risk transfer sector. Even then the convergence between the reinsurance and capital markets was apparent, as institutional money began to get involved in catastrophe risk transfer, but I could not have predicted where the market would be fourteen years later and how much impact it would have had.

When Artemis launched it included the first version of the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked security Deal Directory. At launch the Deal Directory contained just 19 transactions, totalling approximately $2.37 billion in risk capital, which had been issued in the short time that ILS and cat bonds had existed. Now after 14 years of issuance and growth of the market our Deal Directory has added $49.22 billion worth of transactions to now contain 283 deals totalling approximately $51.6 billion of risk capital.

That’s pretty impressive so I thought it would be interesting to see the markets cumulative issuance over the life time of Artemis.

Cumulative catastrophe bond & ILS market issuance from May 1999 (in $ billions according to the Artemis Deal Directory)

As the catastrophe bond, ILS and reinsurance convergence market has grown in size and importance within the overall world’s of reinsurance, risk transfer and investment, so has Artemis. Here are a few key figures.

There are now anywhere between 15,000 to 22,000 unique readers visiting the Artemis website every calendar month. The Artemis News Blog now contains nearly 2,972 articles, all handwritten since the blog launched in March 2008. In the last calendar year over 750,000 pages have been viewed on Artemis, for advertisers that means having your advert seen 750,000 times if it appears on every page of the website. Artemis is the largest audience of its kind on the internet. There is nowhere else online, or indeed offline, where you can reach out and advertise to such a focused, niche and specialist audience covering the topics we concentrate on.

The chart below shows Artemis’ audience growth since May 2008. As the catastrophe bond, ILS and reinsurance convergence market continues to grow so does Artemis and we expect May 2013 to be among the highest traffic ever.

With the growing focus on the ILS, cat bond and reinsurance convergence markets, as more capacity continues to be provided by capital market investors, Artemis will continue to provide an online home for these markets. Artemis is kindly supported by advertisers and sponsors, many of whom you can see in the banners at the top and side of the website. If you like the job Artemis has been doing and want to put your brand in front of the largest audience focused on the topics its covers then please do get in touch with us to discuss advertising.

Artemis has undergone many changes and updates in its long life on the internet, with changes in ownership as well as content strategy. One thing which has not changed is Artemis’ goal, to provide the markets it covers with a home on the internet and to be the homepage to those markets. Here are a few images showing the changing face of Artemis over the years, some of you will no doubt recognise how the website used to look.

This image shows how Artemis looked on the day it launched, 12th May 1999, taken from the original press release

This image shows Artemis in late 2000, around 18 months after its launch

This image shows how Artemis looked in 2004

Artemis adopted its current branding in late 2007, although you’ll notice that some aspects of the branding have never changed, and has not departed from that look since.

Today Artemis has taken another step forwards in look-and-feel. I hope you’ve noticed some small design changes to the news blog to bring the branding more in-line with the homepage style and I hope you like it. This is the first step in a new journey for Artemis, expect some more changes over the coming months!

Finally, thank you to all of the many thousands of readers who have enjoyed Artemis over the years. Artemis has been a labour of love and I hope the passion with which Artemis covers its markets is conveyed in the writing and coverage of what I’m sure you’ll agree is one of the most exciting things to come out of the reinsurance market in its long history.

I hope Artemis will be here covering these markets in another 14 years time and I hope you will still be here to read all about the continuing development and success of these markets on Artemis!

Best regards and enjoy Artemis!

Steve Evans
Owner, Editor of Artemis.bm