Almost every participant in, and commentator on, the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities market is expecting the volume of outstanding cat bonds and ILS in the marketplace to increase over the course of 2012. Issuance volume for the year is expected to be at least comparable with 2011 (as long as no major events affect the market) and possibly much higher. Couple this with the fact that just $3.4 billion of bonds are due to mature over the course of 2012 and the volume of outstanding cat bonds and ILS could see decent growth by year end.
$2.2 billion of outstanding bonds are due to mature during the first half of the year, quite evenly spread across each month up to June. Reinsurer Swiss Re’s recent ILS market update, which we covered in more detail here, shows the maturities by peril and by month over the first half of this year, which is a nice way to visualise it (graph below). We’ll leave it up to you to identify exactly which bonds are maturing which you can do by exploring our comprehensive cat bond and ILS Deal Directory.
Catastrophe bond and ILS maturities, first half 2012 - Source: Swiss Re Capital Markets (as of 31st Dec 2011)
