Insurance Linked Investments

Backed by a private investment group, Northern Re is a reinsurance firm that views itself partly as a hybrid insurance-linked securities (ILS) manager, enabling its insurance company partners to access the benefits of ILS capacity without the usual contractual stipulations required by other collateralized providers, according to co-founder Peter McKelvy.

Hamilton, the Bermuda based insurance and reinsurance holding company, has been generating a helpful addition to its earnings from performance fees earned by its Ada Capital Management third-party capital platform and its Ada Re collateralized reinsurance and retrocession underwriting vehicle, in recent quarters.

Global reinsurer Hannover Re has seen continued success in its business servicing and facilitating transactions in the collateralised reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market in the first-half of 2024, with it notably beating its own full-year record for catastrophe bond limit fronted for already this year.

Arch Capital, via its Arch Mortgage Insurance unit, has confirmed the issuance of the almost $163.2 million in Bellemeade Re 2024-1 Ltd. mortgage insurance-linked securities that we had first reported on more than a week ago, while also saying that it purchased almost $40.8 million in traditional reinsurance alongside them.

Seasonality has started to become visible in the overall yield of the catastrophe bond market, with the figure sliding slightly in the month of July 2024 to end the period at a still historically very high 13.54%.

Aspen Capital Markets, the third-party and alternative reinsurance capital management unit of global re/insurer Aspen, has lifted its assets under management in third-party capital and insurance-linked securities (ILS) vehicles by 46% over the twelve months to June 30th 2024, to reach a new high of $1.9 billion.

A new venture seeks to create an efficient investment access point to the returns of the best-performing Lloyd’s of London syndicates, with start-up Solasta Innovation putting together an experienced team and planning to leverage the London Bridge 2 PCC insurance-linked securities (ILS) structure to channel investor funds to underwriters.

Third-party capital in reinsurance, including that from catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS), could grow by as much as 10% in 2024, with AM Best and broker Guy Carpenter projecting it will be at $105 billion to as high as $110 billion by year-end.

The assets under management of the Icosa Investments catastrophe bond fund strategy have already surpassed the $200 million level, as the manager has seen continued success since its launch at the start of 2024.

Challenger Life, the Australian life and retirement income underwriter and investor, expanded its insurance-linked investment allocation by around 37% in the last financial year, with it now amounting to roughly US $490 million across catastrophe bonds and a newly added sidecar investment, while life insurance investments shrank slightly to US $61 million.