Outstanding catastrophe bond capacity by maturity date

Willis Capital Markets & Advisory (WCMA), the division of global broker Willis Group which focuses on capital markets transactions such as catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities, recently published a review of the first quarter of 2012 ILS market. We’ve already covered Q1 extensively so we won’t cover this report in detail (you can read all about it and download a copy here) but as usual WCMA have included some interesting data visualisations which are worth highlighting, particularly this one on cat bond and ILS maturities.

The quarterly report from WCMA contains a graph which shows the amount of cat bond and ILS maturities by quarter up to the end of 2013 and then by year up to 2016. It’s always interesting to look at these numbers as clearly the market hopes that issuance will outstrip the capacity maturing so that the outstanding cat bond and ILS market grows, rather than contracts.

In Q1 2012 there were four cat bond maturities which totalled over $700m in capacity but WCMA counted $1.343 billion of new cat bond issuance so the market grew in the quarter by just over $600m. For Q2 the WCMA report shows $1.373 billion of cat bond capacity due to mature, but already we have recorded $1.795 billion of issuance this quarter and that doesn’t include the expected growth of Residential Re 2012 above the currently marketed $150m which we have it listed at in our Deal Directory. So again, the outstanding cat bond and ILS market will grow this quarter. Q3 has no maturities and Q4 just over $1 billion, so the outstanding cat bond and ILS market will continue to grow throughout 2012 just so long as there are no market impacting events.

Upcoming cat bond and ILS capacity maturing - Source: WCMA Transaction Database