Catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities news

Catastrophe bond market activity in 2025 resulted in a landmark issuance year for the sector, as adoption of the cat bond as a structure for reinsurance protection and alternative asset class accelerated and expanded. Beyond the headline figures, such as 2025 being the first year to see over $20 billion of cat bond issuance, numerous […]

The combined assets under management of the dedicated mutual catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds managed by the Pioneer Investments team has continued to rise, with the total now over $2.5 billion, while the pure cat bond fund strategy delivered a 12.82% return and the interval ILS fund 18.66%.

There is just one month to go until our upcoming ILS NYC 2026 insurance-linked securities conference and today we have revealed the topics for each of the panel sessions. Please register soon to guarantee your place at the conference, as tickets continue to sell ahead of prior year’s.

The California FAIR Plan, having recently come to market to sponsor its debut wildfire catastrophe bond and secured $750 million of reinsurance from the Golden Bear Re Ltd. (Series 2026-1) issuance, has now commented on the deal to say that the cat bond “augments” its robust reinsurance program arrangements.

Catastrophe bond market insurance risk spreads, or the discount margin, increased by roughly 6% in the month of December 2025, as spread widening returned to more seasonal norms lifting the overall yield of the catastrophe bond market to 8.80%.

Aetna, the health, medical and benefits insurance unit of CVS Health, has returned to the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market seeking $250 million of health care related reinsurance from a Vitality Re XVII Ltd (Series 2026) deal, which will become its seventeenth deal in the Vitality Re series.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund sector gained 0.81% on average for November 2025, lifting the group of cat bond and ILS funds tracked by the ILS Advisers Fund Index to an average 11-month return of 10.40%.

Alternative reinsurance capital, so that deployed through insurance-linked securities and related collateralized structures, reached a new high of $124 billion as of September 30th 2025, according to Aon and the broker expects the growth trend to persist as third-party investors show “consistent” appetite for returns from the sector.

The latest data from the Plenum CAT Bond UCITS Fund Indices shows that the entire group averaged a 9.99% return for the latest available twelve month period, while the lower and higher-risk cohorts of UCITS cat bond funds each averaged a 10.02% return.

As cyber catastrophe bonds continued to come to market in the fourth-quarter of 2025 one notable fact was that, aided by the weight of capital and investor interest, the cyber cat bonds placed appeared to come without so much, or perhaps any, of the innovation premium paid for the first glut of cyber ILS deals, […]