QBE sees Bridge Street Re catastrophe bond as “important enabler”: Killourhy

Having recently secured $250 million of retrocessional reinsurance protection from its first catastrophe bond sponsorship since 2013, QBE executives have now said that the Bridge Street Re Ltd. (Series 2025-1) issuance is an “important enabler” and builds on the launch of its recent Bermudian balance-sheet entities.

As we had reported through December, QBE, the Australia headquartered global insurance and reinsurance group, ventured back to the catastrophe bond market for its first time since 2013.

In the end, special purpose insurer Bridge Street Re issued $250 million of Series 2025-1 Class A notes to provide QBE with a multi-year source of retrocessional reinsurance protection, on an industry-loss trigger and annual aggregate basis, protecting the company against major named storm and earthquake industry loss events throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, DC, the US Virgin Islands and Canada over a roughly three-year term.

As we explained, QBE benefited from investor demand and strong execution for its first catastrophe bond since 2013, as the notes priced roughly 14% below the mid-point of initial guidance for the company.

QBE hailed the successful Bridge Street Re cat bond issuance this morning.

Inder Singh QBE Group Chief Financial Officer commented, “QBE Insurance Group is thrilled to now have in place this first issuance under the Bridge Street Re Catastrophe Bond program.

“Building on our recently evolved Bermudian balance sheet proposition, this highly successful issuance further enhances our capital management strategy.”

As we reported in our first article about this Bridge Street Re cat bond deal back on December 12th 2024, QBE was leveraging two new Bermuda Class 4 entities it had recently set up to add efficiency to the way it organises its reinsurance offerings and balance-sheet needs, QBE Capital Ltd. and QBE Capital (Global) Ltd., which are the two cedents to this new Bridge Street Re cat bond.

Chris Killourhy QBE Re Managing Director added; “As we look to capitalize on high quality growth opportunities in the North American property catastrophe space, and bring additional capacity to our core cedants, this series is an important enabler and further diversifies our access to capital.”

Catastrophe bonds enable efficient access to capital and capacity that can not just protect, but can also act as a lever for re/insurers balance-sheets, allowing more business to be written and applying elasticity to their own funding resources.

You can read all about this new Bridge Street Re Ltd. (Series 2025-1) catastrophe bond transaction and every other cat bond ever issued in our Artemis Deal Directory.