Sailfish Re Ltd. (Koi Re – Series 2025-1)

Bermuda based special purpose insurer Sailfish Re Ltd. has issued a $30 million tranche of private catastrophe bond notes for an unknown sponsor, under a Koi Re Series 2025-1 issuance.

Sailfish Re Ltd. was incorporated in late 2022 and registered in Bermuda as an unrestricted SPI, back in January 2023, so it is a structure that can enter into collateralized reinsurance contracts with multiple counterparties.

Since then, we haven’t seen any private catastrophe bonds come through the Sailfish Re Ltd. structure, until now.

Sailfish Re Ltd. has issued a single $30 million tranche of Koi Re Series 2025-1 Class A notes, we understand.

Those notes will have been sold to insurance-linked securities (ILS) investors and the proceeds used to collateralize a reinsurance or retrocession agreement, as is typical with these more private cat bond lite type deals.

We’ve learned that Lockton Re Capital Markets, the specialist banking and ILS arm of the independent broking group, has acted as the structuring agent and bookrunner for this Koi Re 2025-1 private cat bond issuance.

Koi Re is a segregated account of the Sailfish Re Ltd. unrestricted SPI. The $30 million of Koi Re 2025-12 notes issued by Sailfish Re Ltd. were issued as private 4(a)2 notes and placed with institutional investors, we understand.

We’re told the notes will provide an as yet unknown sponsor with reinsurance or retrocession across a one year term to June 1st 2026, with maturity due on the 5th of that month, although we do not have any details of the sponsor, the covered perils or regions, at this time.

We assume the notes will support a transfer of natural catastrophe risks from the sponsor to capital markets investors, as property cat is the most typical risk to see in catastrophe bond form, although we cannot be 100% certain yet. We also do not have any details of the coverage structure or risk transfer triggers used.

We do know that the private cat bond was issued on a zero-coupon basis, as discount notes, and they were issued at a price of 90.5% of par, we have been told.

Update:

We now know that the sponsors and beneficiaries of protection with this Koi Re private cat bond are insurers Centauri Insurance and Lilypad Insurance.

The ceding companies to this Koi Re private cat bond are Lilypad National Insurance Company and Centauri Specialty Insurance Company, two specialist property insurers.

The $30 million of Koi Re 2025-1 notes issued by Sailfish Re Ltd. will provide these two ceding companies with a single year of collateralized named storm and hurricane reinsurance protection, the companies have now explained.

The area of reinsurance coverage is for the key US states these insurers operate in, being protection against named storm losses in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina, as well as Hawaii.

In addition, it’s now know that this private cat bond has been structured to provide its reinsurance cover on an indemnity trigger and per-occurrence basis over the one year term to May 31st 2026.

The Sailfish Re Ltd. unrestricted SPI is actually a Lockton owned structure that has been used by the broker for arranging collateralized reinsurance arrangements for its clients in the past and it is managed by Strategic Risk Solutions (SRS) on Lockton Re’s behalf.

Notably, we understand that the Koi Re Series 2025-1 issuance is the first private catastrophe bond to be issued under Sailfish Re Ltd.