Insurance Linked Investments

Our latest quarterly report on the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market is now available to download. The report, ‘Q2 2018 – Sponsors and investors show commitment to ILS’, analyses a bumper second-quarter featuring $5.15 billion of issuance, which drove the outstanding market to a new high at $35.3 billion.

U.S. primary insurer Federated National Holding Company (FNHC) is once again a good example of the important role that collateralized reinsurance markets including ILS fund managers are playing in the protection arrangements of the primary market.

In the quarter of record ending April 30th 2018, the Pioneer ILS Interval Fund, a U.S. mutual insurance-linked securities and reinsurance linked investment fund managed by Amundi Pioneer Investment Management, increased its assets under management by 20% to reach $810 million.

The target for the initial public offering (IPO) and first capital raise for Insurance Income Strategies Ltd., the listed industry-loss warranty (ILW) focused insurance-linked securities (ILS) and collateralized reinsurance fund backed by 1347 Advisors and Kinsgway Financial, has been halved.

U.S. primary insurance giant Liberty Mutual has now tapped the capital markets for almost $700 million of collateralized reinsurance capacity through the firms Bermuda segregated accounts reinsurance sidecar vehicle, Limestone Re Ltd., according to James Slaughter.

The Canadian financial markets regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), has called for ceding companies to perform a higher level of due diligence on reinsurance purchases involving ILS and alternative sources of capital.

The island domicile of Guernsey has experienced higher insurance-linked securities (ILS) and collateralised reinsurance activity in 2018 so far, compared to the prior year, as use of its protected cell company (PCC) structure continued to increase and now aims to innovate to drive further market growth.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank recently concluded that at least stable pricing, or better, will be required for one of the major reinsurance firms to hit its long-term targets, something which applies to the rest of the industry as well.

Bermuda based specialist collateralized reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment manager Pillar Capital has announced the hire of Jeffrey T. Daddario as Senior Analyst, joining the firm from his last role with JLT Capital Markets.

Total net assets appear to have risen at industry loss warranty (ILW) focused mutual insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund the City National Rochdale Select Strategies Fund (CNRLX) in the last quarterly report, but at the same time the value of investments in the portfolio was almost static.