Q1 2012 catastrophe bond and ILS issuance hit $1.493 billion, over $2 billion year-to-date

The first quarter of 2012 saw record catastrophe bond and insurance-linked security issuance with the total volume of cat bonds and ILS issued hitting $1.493 billion at the end of March. This beat last year’s record Q1 issuance of $1.015 billion by $478m as both regular sponsors and some new issuers pushed the volume of Q1 cat bonds to new highs. This continued the trend from Q4 2011 which also saw strong momentum with record issuance.

Nine catastrophe bonds and ILS were issued in Q1 2012, providing almost $1.5 billion in new capacity for their sponsors. There was a lot of issuance from repeat sponsors renewing cover from transactions that matured but also an encouraging amount of transactions involving new ceding insurers who ultimately benefit from the cover the cat bond provides.

Investors stepped up to continue to commit new capital into the cat bond and ILS market to help keep up with the rate of issuance and this trend has been seen continuing into Q2. Reinsurance broker and active ILS market participant Aon Benfield provide some commentary on the capital markets and insurance-linked securities in their recently published Reinsurance Market Outlook which discusses the state of the market at the 1st April renewals. In it they say that investors in cat bonds and ILS have provided record first quarter capacity. They say that spreads in cat bond and ILS securities remain very attractive to institutional investors seeking yield and a decent interest return.

Aon Benfield also note that sponsoring insurers continue to bring incremental new demand to the capital markets rather than to the traditional markets where there is some fear of adding additional capacity to a market which is fairly price uncertain right now. This statement bodes well for the next few months issuance in the run up to the mid-year renewals as that price uncertainty is unlikely to go away at least until after the larger renewal season is over.

The chart below shows catastrophe bond issuance by quarter from 2008 to present.

Catastrophe Bond Issuance by Quarter - Source: Aon Benfield Securities Inc.

Aon Benfield say in their report that the market is on track to exceed $5 billion of issuance this year thanks to the brisk first quarter and the active forward pipeline of new cat bond deals.

Here’s a table of all of the cat bond and ILS transactions issued in Q1 2012:

And the bumper issuance doesn’t seem ready to stop just yet as Q2 2012 has started with four deals already in the marketplace. Three of them have completed in the last week leaving just Everglades Re actively being marketed but we understand that there are more deals to come before April is out. This brings the total volume of completed cat bond and ILS deals so far this year to well over $2 billion.

We’ll keep you updated as the Q2 catastrophe bond pipeline continues to unfold.