Archive for January, 2025

Once again, Bermuda has shown its dominant position as a home to structures used for catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) arrangements in 2024, with companies set up for this purpose dominating registrations of new insurance and reinsurance entities in Bermuda last year.

According to Joseph Tolen, Senior Investment Director in the Credit Investment Group at Cambridge Associates, the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market “continues to be attractive and should deliver strong returns in 2025.”

Having originally said that insurance and reinsurance market losses from the Los Angeles, California wildfires were likely to “notably exceed $10 billion,” reinsurance broker Gallagher Re has now issued an updated estimate range, for an industry loss of between $20 billion and $30 billion.

CoreLogic, the risk modelling and catastrophe data company, has provided an initial estimate for insured losses from the Los Angeles, California wildfires, saying the total is expected to fall in a range from $35 billion to as high as $45 billion.

Today, we are delighted to reveal the full agenda for our upcoming catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) conference. Artemis ILS NYC 2025 is being held in New York on February 7th. Tickets are still available but selling fast, so please register soon to ensure you can join us at the event.

Amundi US Investment Management has reported that its Pioneer CAT Bond Fund strategy delivered a 14.27% return in the year to October 31st 2024, while assets under management in the strategy have continued to expand through the end of the year.

Howden’s capital markets and insurance-linked securities (ILS) specialist unit, Howden Capital Markets & Advisory (HCMA), has announced that Philipp Kusche, who serves as the firm’s Global Head of ILS & Capital Solutions, will take on an expanded role as Chairman of HCMA, Europe, with Mitchell Rosenberg becoming Co-Head of Global ILS.

Fermat Capital Management, the specialist manager of catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) investments, has launched a new range of commingled ILS strategies already supporting around $2 billion in assets, as well as two key hires to its global investor relations team.

Demand for non-marine retrocession capacity, which is largely property and catastrophe focused, was relatively stable at the key 1/1 renewals, but Gallagher Re noted that supply of capital for these opportunities was up resulting in more favourable conditions for buyers.

The California Earthquake Authority (CEA) is discussing the need for either a pre-funded subsequent or second-event funding tower (with risk transfer and reinsurance perhaps a part of it), or the infrastructure for one, that would support its functions after a significant earthquake loss that depletes its claims paying ability.