Insurance Linked Investments

While the recent survey we conducted alongside Synpulse, looking at the adoption of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices in the risk transfer, reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) markets, found that ESG is perceived as very important, there is an evident gap between perception and actual practice.

Following the news that Guernsey based, Credit Suisse Insurance Linked Strategies supported reinsurance firms Kelvin Re and Humboldt Re are to cease underwriting new business, rating agency AM Best has placed their ratings under review with negative implications.

In light of a marketplace that had slowed its growth trajectory somewhat in recent years, Fitch has underlined the need for a sustained inflow of new sponsors to drive a more dynamic, growing catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) sector.

The two Guernsey domiciled, rated reinsurance carriers managed by and backed by capital from the Credit Suisse Insurance Linked Strategies Ltd. team, Kelvin Re and Humboldt Re, are not renewing any business this January and will stop writing.

A new set of guidance on the treatment of passive foreign investment companies (PFICs) published at the end of last week by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and Department of the Treasury has been modified so that the active conduct test excludes insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds, as well as other ILS and reinsurance securitization structures.

Improved reinsurance market pricing is attracting significant sums of capital, with the latest estimate from broker Willis Re being that $19 billion has already been raised since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and another $3 billion of capital raises are underway.

During its investor day yesterday, senior executives from Arch Capital, the Bermuda headquartered specialty insurance and reinsurance group, explained that third-party sources of capital and its insurance-linked securities (ILS) platform are key to future growth opportunities.

Carrie Lam, Chief Executive of the Government of Hong Kong, has highlighted catastrophe bond market growth in 2020 and a buoyant outlook for insurance-linked securities (ILS) as an opportunity for the Special Administrative Region as it moves towards enabling issuance of new ILS securities.

The mortgage insurance-linked securities (ILS) market has demonstrated its resiliency through the COVID-19 pandemic, as issuance came back to market despite the uncertainty created by a sharp increase in delinquencies, according to rating agency Fitch.

Use of third-party investor capital to support growth of insurance and reinsurance businesses is an expanding trend, as carriers find an increasing array of routes to channel capital markets funding to their underwriting vehicles, adjusting the traditional value chain as they go.