Insurance Linked Investments

Commentary attributed to Everest Group CEO Juan Andrade helps to drive home the fact that reinsurance and so also many ILS strategies are now sitting higher up the catastrophe risk tower, with larger industry loss events required to meaningfully involve them in paying claims.

Delivering a welcome speech this morning at the Artemis ILS Asia 2023 conference in Singapore, Cheng Khai Lim, Executive Director, Financial Markets Development Department, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), highlighted the need for greater structuring and deal capabilities in Asia, as Singapore continues to streamline its insurance-linked securities (ILS) regulatory regime.

The pension fund of global beverage and food giant the Coca Cola Company saw its allocation to insurance-linked securities (ILS) shrink again in 2022, falling by almost 26% over the course of the year, to just $246 million.

With property catastrophe reinsurance rates and pricing having soared in recent months, rating agency AM Best sees this as a potential headwind for the burgeoning non-cat insurance-linked securities (ILS) segment, as investors focus may shift back to catastrophe risks.

The BofA Securities analyst team say they are increasingly constructive on the reinsurance sector, one reason being that alternative capital growth is not being driven by the collateralized side of the ILS market, while catastrophe bonds are seen as a more compatible instrument and complementary to traditional reinsurance.

Insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment management specialist Nephila Capital has written just over $756 million of the $2.98 billion reinsurance placement by Florida Citizens at the renewals in 2023, but Berkshire Hathaway was the largest participant with a huge $1 billion line.

The issuance of Beazley’s $45 million Cairney cyber catastrophe bond, and Hannover Re’s $100 million, Stone Ridge Asset Management-backed retrocession cyber quota share arrangement, “represent the potential for a broader reinsurance source for the risk,” according to Fitch Ratings.

Capital raised in reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) year-to-date remains far below the level required to threaten the current hard market cycle, according to analysts at J.P. Morgan.

London headquartered specialty insurance and reinsurance firm Beazley is moving its ESG consortium out of the Lloyd’s Syndicate In A Box (SIAB) framework to sit under its third-party capital backed Smart Tracker syndicate 5623.

Reflecting investor sentiment and where capital is flowing to in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, asset manager Amundi US has been growing its new Pioneer Cat Bond Fund strategy, but the manager’s Pioneer ILS Interval Fund has continued to shrink.