GC Securities worked on 20 cat bonds in H1’26, totalling record $5bn: Guy Carpenter CEO Klisura

GC Securities, the investment banking and capital markets arm of reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter, worked on 20 catastrophe bonds in the first-half of 2026, totalling $5 billion of limit, a record for the broker, according to CEO Dean Klisura.

Speaking earlier today during a second-quarter earnings call for parent company Marsh McLennan, Guy Carpenter CEO Klisura explained that despite pricing headwinds, the broker continues to see strong opportunities to grow moving forward.

“Our negative growth in the quarter and our flat growth for the first half of the year were clearly driven by declining property cat pricing,” the CEO said.

“Our property catastrophe rate-on-line index, which you see every quarter, was down 16% at mid-year, accelerating down from -12% at the January 1 renewal, and the steepest year-over-year decline we’ve observed since the index was created 25 years ago,” Klisura noted.

“As you know, property is 50% of our global portfolio and we have the largest property cat book in the global marketplace.”

He continued: “We continue to deliver strong execution in a very challenging market. And as John noted, despite pricing headwinds we see strong opportunities to grow moving forward.

“We had record new business in the first half of the year. Strong double-digit new business growth, our RFP win rate has never been stronger. And outside of property, we have a number of businesses that are performing very well. As Nick mentioned, our international facultative business is growing double digit and our casualty business continues to grow strong mid-single digits,” Klisura added.

The CEO then highlighted how Guy Carpenter’s Global Capital & Advisory Unit, which is comprised of GC Securities, Structured Solutions, and Capital & M&A, managed to deliver strong growth in the first half of 2026.

“Capital & advisory continues to deliver strong double-digit growth, and M&A advisory, structured deals, sidecars, and other capital structures. And we led 20 cat bond issuances in the first half of the year totalling $5 billion of limit, a record for Guy Carpenter.

“We continue to invest in top production talent around the world. We’ve grown our headcount for five straight years. And demand for our advice and solutions from clients has never been stronger,” Klisura added.

We assume here that Klisura is referring to the GC Securities unit’s activities within the catastrophe bond market, where it remains one of the leading structuring, arranging and bookrunning specialists for cat bond issuances.

Looking at the Artemis leaderboard of catastrophe bond banks and brokers, GC Securities is currently positioned in second place, having facilitated over $22.40 billion in catastrophe bond risk capital currently outstanding that the unit has worked on.

This outstanding risk capital is derived from 91 outstanding catastrophe bond transactions that we’ve tracked, to which GC Securities has provided its services.

Roughly one year ago, so around the mid-point of 2025, GC Securities was associated with just over $21.72 billion of outstanding cat bonds from our Deal Directory from 87 deals.

Over the past year, although the figure has experienced only a modest increase due to a heavy maturity load in the market, with four additional cat bond transactions, it is evident that GC Securities has persistently grown its business in tandem with the surge in cat bond activity observed in the market over the last couple of years.

Read more about Guy Carpenter’s Q2 2026 results over on our sister publication Reinsurance News.