Insurance Linked Investments

Catastrophe bond returns remain very strong as the higher spread environment continues to deliver in 2023 and as a result the average return across UCITS cat bond fund strategies has now reached 3.07%, at March 17th.

Julia Henderson, Chief Commercial Officer at ILS focused insurtech Vesttoo, has asserted that leveraging technology to deliver more transparent and objective risk pricing is key to gaining both investor and rating agency confidence in the alternative capital space.

Amundi Asset Management US, Inc. (Amundi US) aims to develop its newly launched Pioneer CAT Bond Fund into a strategy that can deliver double-digit returns in the current catastrophe bond market environment, while charging its investors a lower level in fees, Artemis has learned.

Howden Tiger, the reinsurance arm of the Howden Broking Group, has brought together its Legacy and Investment Banking operations under the combined leadership of Jarad Madea, CEO, Howden Tiger Capital Markets & Advisory (HTCMA).

The market for cyber insurance-linked securities (ILS) continues to develop, but as cyber insurance itself has not faced a catastrophic loss yet, AM Best believes the use of capital to buffer underwriting operations may end up revisited, when any major loss event occurs.

In a new report, rating agency Moody’s Investors Service has highlighted the much improved outlook for reinsurance-linked returns, through its comments on the big four reinsurers.

Insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment manager Twelve Capital has adopted a defensive stance in the face of the market volatility caused by the financial market upheaval, although the company believes insurers are much better positioned than banks at this time.

The crisis being seen in banking sectors, most prominently with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and sale of Credit Suisse to UBS, is not a crisis of the insurance sector, and there are no fundamentals to support the recent revaluation of insurance debt, Plenum Investments has stated.

The “denominator effect” and investor rebalancing across asset classes has driven some of the biggest challenges for the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market in recent months, Chris Parry, Global Head of Capital Partners at RenaissanceRe, told us in our latest Artemis Live interview.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) market is seen as at a crossroads in the wake of hurricane Ian, although ILS capacity has still expanded and the catastrophe bond market is seen as the best positioned segment, rating agency AM Best has said.