atmencapital plans to launch first UCITS cat bond fund regulated in France

With the catastrophe bond asset class continuing to gain awareness and traction across investors worldwide, atmencapital is the first asset manager to plan to launch a UCITS catastrophe bond fund that will be domiciled and regulated in France.

atmencapital is the first boutique asset manager to launch in France with a strategy dedicated to the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, with catastrophe bonds being its focus.

With its name based on the German verb that means breathe, atmencapital has been established by a team with a pedigree from investments and reinsurance at Swiss Re, bringing together more than 20 years of experience in asset management, ILS and underwriting.

The company has been co-founded by Antoine Bory, who manages investor relations, marketing and communications and has a background across asset management and private banking, including time spent in Swiss Re’s asset management team. He also has a pedigree for starting boutique asset management businesses and raising meaningful capital for them.

atmencapital’s other co-founder is Emmanuel Uhlhorn, who will be the firm’s lead Investment Portfolio Manager. Uhlhorn has 25 years of underwriting and actuarial experience, having worked in P&C reinsurance at Swiss Re, based in London, Paris and Zurich during his career.

We understand that additional team members with reinsurance and risk backgrounds are also set to join the asset manager in due course.

atmencapital received its approvals from French regulator the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) last year and is now moving towards launching its first dedicated cat bond fund.

The company is the first independent French boutique catastrophe bond investment manager, on top of which it plans to be the first to launch a French regulated UCITS cat bond fund strategy as well.

Naturally, the initial focus at atmencapital will be on working with French investors, hoping to simplify their entry to cat bond investing by removing regulatory or domicile related complexities, through their familiarity with the domestic market, enabling the focus to be purely on the asset class itself as they make allocation decisions.

atmencapital hopes to launch with around US $100m-$150m of capital later in 2026 with French investor backing, and in future intends to target investors more broadly across Europe and in particular Switzerland.

The company sees a competitive advantage in being the first French cat bond asset manager, with a French team and a France-regulated investment structure.

The first fund is in the process of being registered as a UCITS strategy with the French regulators and its name will be the atmen Cat Bonds Resilience Fund.

It will be the first French-domiciled UCITS V compliant catastrophe bond fund in the market, targeting professional investors only with a long-only cat bond investment strategy and with ESG criteria integrated alongside SFDR Article 8 compliance.

The atmen Cat Bonds Resilience Fund strategy will be to only allocate capital to 144A catastrophe bond instruments, so as to maintain the integrity of liquidity for the fund, offering weekly liquidity in a French wrapper to its investors.

atmencapital’s allocation plans are to be a little more concentrated than some other UCITS cat bond funds, with an expectation its portfolio could hold around notes in around 100 different cat bond tranches once scaled.

The company sees an opportunity to tap into the French institutional investor base, while delivering a new and uncorrelated source of returns for their portfolios, with strong ESG alignment through cat bonds societal resilience benefits.