Insurance Linked Investments

U.S. primary insurance giant Liberty Mutual has returned to the capital markets to boost its reinsurance at mid-year, with the issuance and sale to investors of a $278 million series of notes from its Bermuda segregated accounts reinsurance sidecar vehicle, Limestone Re Ltd.

Nephila Advisors’ Co-Founder Greg Hagood feels scale is becoming increasingly important for insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund managers, and believes the next evolution of the ILS market is to “rationalise a very inefficient distribution chain.”

The African nation of Kenya is the next country in line to benefit from a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (Cat DDO) from the World Bank, with a project underway to deliver a $200 million disaster risk financing arrangement including a catastrophe contingent line of credit, alongside development financing.

Insurance and reinsurance industry broker Aon believes the rate rises seen this year made it a good time to initiate or add to an investment in insurance-linked securities (ILS), in light of the potential for firming to be sustained in some catastrophe markets.

The London exchange listed Blue Capital Alternative Income Fund insurance and reinsurance linked investment strategy has stopped making any new investments pending a vote to decide whether it should be put into run-off or not.

Crosswinds Re, a total return strategy reinsurance vehicle established by Canadian asset manager Crosswinds Holdings Inc., is set to be dissolved along with the entire Crosswinds venture, as the reinsurer failed to find rates attractive enough at the renewals to underwrite any business.

RenaissanceRe’s collateralized reinsurance sidecar like vehicle Fibonacci Reinsurance Ltd. has completed a new $125 million issuance of notes, in a Series 2018-2 transaction that will have brought investors and funds a new slice of the Bermudian reinsurers risk, in a format similar to a catastrophe bond.

Collateralized reinsurance company Oxbridge Re Ltd. has now had its planned sidecar vehicle, Oxbridge Re NS Ltd., licensed for business in the Cayman Island’s and the sidecar has also issued its first tranche of notes.

Tony Belisle, the Chief Executive Officer of Markel CATCo Investment Management Ltd., has taken the number of shares he has recently acquired in his firms stock exchange listed retrocessional reinsurance ILS fund strategy to 2.5 million shares across all classes, with another two purchases made.

While it sometimes feels as if insurance-linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance linked investments are almost mainstream, there is still a way to go before the asset class truly becomes a staple of the major institutional investors of this world, as evidenced in the results of a recent survey by Mercer.