John Seo on 25 years in the catastrophe bond business: Artemis Live video interview

With specialist catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment manager Fermat Capital Management celebrating its 25th birthday this year, for our latest Artemis Live video interview we spoke with co-founder and Managing Director of the firm John Seo.

The company manages more than $11 billion of investments across catastrophe bonds and related insurance-linked securities and John Seo gave us an insight into how he views the market’s development over the 25 year history of Fermat Capital Management and his expectations for the future of the ILS industry.

We discussed Fermat Capital Management’s 25-year history in the catastrophe bond and ILS business, as well as opportunities and challenges for the asset class’ future.

Seo talked us through how he undertook the task of selecting a list of 25 notable catastrophe bond transactions from across Fermat’s history, saying they were chosen as a representative, partly subjective selection from deals where Fermat had been a lead investor.

He also explained some of the lessons he’s learned through his long-tenure in the ILS industry, noting the importance as an investment manager of compounding knowledge over-time to improve returns while managing risk.

We discussed how market cycles have changed and whether traditional insurance, reinsurance and ILS market cycles are coming more into phase in 2026.

On the future of the industry, Seo identified on-shoring of cat bond and ILS structures as a way to catalyse more rapid adoption and market expansion, while also commenting on the data centre risk transfer opportunity.

Seo said that a larger ILS market could support more orderly issuance and result in substantial market growth, enabling the catastrophe bond and capital market investors to support a greater proportion of the world’s natural disaster risks, as well as other catastrophic exposures.

Watch the full video interview to learn much more about Fermat Capital Management’s 25 year journey in the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities market.

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You can access Fermat Capital Management’s article detailing the 25 landmark catastrophe bond deals we discussed in this interview over on the firm’s website.