City of Zurich Pension ILS investments grow to US $1.58bn, returned 6.9% in 2025

The City of Zurich Pension Fund saw its investments in insurance-linked securities (ILS) strategies delivering a positive return of 6.9% in 2025, while the value of the ILS allocation rose meaningfully in the last year, to around US $1.58 billion by April 30th 2026.

When we last reported on the City of Zurich Pension Fund (or Pensionskasse Stadt Zürich) and its investments into the insurance-linked securities sector just over one year ago, the pension had benefited from a 9.2% return in 2024, while the value of its investments in USD had reached just over $1.15 billion by March 2025.

In that report we explained that the City of Zurich Pension Fund had added new ILS manager’s to its external manager roster, taking the total number to ten.

It seems new investments have been made by the pension, which have increased its ILS investments to the new high of roughly US $1.58 billion by April 30th this year.

At that level, the ILS allocation now makes up 5.1% of the total assets under the pensions management, which stood at CHF 24.4 billion at May 8th 2026.

That stands just slightly above its 5% of assets target for ILS, but still well within its allowable target allocation range, which is now from 2.5% of assets to as much as 7% of assets.

One point worth noting though, is that the target allocation range for the City of Zurich Pension Fund’s ILS allocation had previously run up to 8% of assets. Although it seems likely this has come down slightly given the pension’s overall growth in assets under management.

The pension’s ILS investments stood at around US $1.49 billion as of the end of December 2025. But at that time it reported an outstanding capital commitment to ILS of around US $45 million.

So with the growth through April to around US $1.58 billion of ILS investments, it’s possible this fresh allocation commitment has now also been made.

Across all of its asset class investments, the City of Zurich Pension reported a 7.2% return for 2025, with ILS delivering a 6.9% return and valuable diversification for its strategy.

On a net basis though, currency hedging impacted the dollar result for all asset classes, something that will have affected the ILS portfolio return as well for the pension.

The ILS investments continued to demonstrate strong value for the City of Zurich Pension Fund in 2025 and with their value increasing, potentially through further allocations so far in 2026, this is likely to continue.

Recall that, the City of Zurich Pension Fund has been investing in insurance-linked securities (ILS) since 2017.

It started through allocations to life settlements with Broadriver and Miravast, before adding its first P&C ILS fund allocation to Elementum Advisors in June 2019, then allocated to a SCOR Investment Partners ILS strategy in January 2021.

Allocations to ILS strategies managed by Schroders, Pillar Capital and RenaissanceRe were added at the end of 2021. Then at the end of 2022, the pension added new allocations to life insurance-linked investment strategies managed by Broadriver and Miravast, and made an allocation to a fund managed by Hiscox ILS in September 2023, before then adding Tangency Capital in May 2024 and then Integral ILS in December 2024.

View details of major pension fund and sovereign wealth investors in ILS and reinsurance in our directory.