Archive for April, 2025

Reinsurance broker Gallagher Re has estimated that preliminary total insured catastrophe losses for the first quarter of 2025 reached $56 billion, which makes it the costliest first quarter for the private insurance market and government-sponsored insurance entities since 2011, and 176% higher than the Q1 decadal average of $20 billion (2015–2024).

With a growing number of catastrophe bond sponsors opting to bring deals to market earlier in the year, the increasing availability of pre-wind season and off-risk investment opportunities, that pay a partial or full risk premium spread right from settlement, are proving attractive to cat bond investors we’ve spoken with.

According to broker Aon’s Q1 Global Catastrophe Recap, insured losses in the opening quarter of 2025 exceeded $53 billion, well above the 21st-century Q1 average of $17 billion, marking the second-highest total on record after Q1 2011.

US primary insurer Allstate has disclosed that a heavy March catastrophe loss burden means it now anticipates making $123 million of reinsurance recoveries from its aggregate tower, whose coverage is solely provided by catastrophe bonds from the Sanders Re program.

Great American Insurance Group has now secured $310 million of multi-peril collateralized reinsurance through its new Riverfront Re Ltd. (Series 2025-1) catastrophe bond transaction, which represents 38% more in protection than the insurer had initially targeted from the deal and its largest cat bond yet, according to our sources.

Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation has secured the 40% upsized target for $280 million of collateralized named storm reinsurance from the Bayou Re Ltd. (Series 2025-1) catastrophe bond issuance, which now becomes the insurers largest cat bond ever, Artemis can report.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending April 20th 2025, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics. To ensure you never miss a thing subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates or get our email alerts for every article we publish.

A new Guernsey based life and annuity focused reinsurance company named Navigate Re has been launched with Polo Insurance Managers (PIM) assistance, the goal being to channel insurance-linked returns to investors through a vehicle sponsored by alternative asset manager Erithmitic.

The main four parametric disaster insurance risk pools have signed a grant agreement with the Global Shield Solutions Platform (GSSP) to help them accelerate and deepen their collaboration, something which could have implications for how they transfer risk to reinsurance and potentially capital markets.

Returns in the reinsurance market are still strong despite softening at recent renewals and this is driving some reinsurers to seek out growth while the opportunity remains, which analysts at J.P. Morgan call a rational view.