SCOR secures $75m Atlas Capital 2026-1 cat bond priced at low-end, bolstering retrocession

French reinsurance company SCOR has now secured the targeted $75 million of multi-peril fully-collateralized retrocession it was seeking from its new Atlas Capital DAC (Series 2026-1) catastrophe bond, while the notes priced at the low-end of initial guidance, Artemis has learned.

SCOR ventured back into the catastrophe bond market earlier this month, with an initial target to secure $75 million of fully-collateralized catastrophe retrocession through sponsorship of what now becomes its twenty-first cat bond.

The size target never changed during the offering process for this latest cat bond for SCOR, but the company’s price ambitions adjusted as the company looked to capitalise on strong execution trends seen in the catastrophe bond market to secure the protection at lower pricing.

Now, the notes have been priced at the low-end of the initial guidance range, helping SCOR finalise this new additional to its retrocessional protection at attractive pricing.

This latest Atlas Capital DAC Series 2026-1 catastrophe bond now becomes the twentieth successfully sponsored by SCOR that takes the Atlas name and the twenty-first cat bond in total from the company that we have tracked since the year 2000, including its Horizon securitization of credit liabilities back in 2001.

SCOR has been sponsoring catastrophe bonds to access the capital for retrocession purposes since the year 2000 and you can read about all of them by filtering our Deal Directory by sponsor.

Atlas Capital DAC will now issue and sell its $75 million single tranche of Series 2026-1 Class A catastrophe bonds notes to investors, with the proceeds of that sale set to collateralize a reinsurance agreement to provide SCOR with a roughly three-year source of annual aggregate, weighted industry loss trigger based retro reinsurance protection, running to maturity in early June 2029.

The covered perils and regions for this cat bond are named storms in the U.S. and Caribbean (inc. DC, Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands), as well as earthquakes in the U.S. (inc. DC, Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands) and Canada, and windstorms in Europe.

The now confirmed as $75 million tranche of Atlas Capital DAC Series 2026-1 Class A cat bond notes come with an initial base expected loss of 3.13%.

Initially, the notes were offered to cat bond funds and investors with price guidance in a range from 6% to 6.5%.

Later, the price guidance was updated for a risk interest spread of between 5.5% and 6%, but we’re now told final pricing was of the notes was to pay an initial risk interest spread to investors of 6%, so the low-end of the initial guidance range.

As a result, SCOR has secured its new catastrophe bond backed retrocession paying a multiple-at-market of almost 1.92 times the initial expected loss.

For comparison, last year’s $200 million Atlas Capital 2025-1 cat bond notes had an initial expected loss of 3.29% and priced to pay investors a spread of 7.25%, which was a multiple-at-market of 2.2 times the EL, with this year’s issuance reflecting the softer pricing available to protection buyers in reinsurance and the cat bond market.

SCOR has $490 million of outstanding catastrophe bond protection at this time, the Artemis leaderboard shows.

The reinsurer’s $75 million Atlas Capital 2023-1 cat bond, which provides similar coverage, although not including the Caribbean, is scheduled to mature in early June.

As a result, once this new offering has settled and the 2023-1 cat bond matured, SCOR will continue to have the same $490 million of retrocession available from the catastrophe bond market, but with slightly broader geographical coverage available to the reinsurer for the coming hurricane season.

You can read all about this Atlas Capital DAC (Series 2026-1) catastrophe bond from SCOR and every other cat bond transaction in the Artemis Deal Directory.