Cat bond fund news

Plenum Investments, the Zurich based specialist catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment manager, has reached a new milestone with more than US $2 billion of assets under management across its funds and strategies for the first time.

This morning it has been announced that Nuveen, a US asset manager subsidiary of TIAA, is set to acquire Schroders for around £9.9 billion, creating a significant global group with around US $2.5 trillion of assets under management, but notably for our market with the Schroders brand to be retained.

Catastrophe bond fund strategies in the UCITS format have started 2026 positively, delivering an average return of 0.53% for January, according to the Plenum CAT Bond UCITS Fund Indices.

The Icosa Cat Bond Fund, the UCITS catastrophe bond strategy distributed by Icosa Investments AG, has experienced strong growth in assets through the second-half of 2025 which continued into the new year, now reaching a new milestone of US $1 billion in assets under management (AUM).

Catastrophe bond market insurance risk spreads, or the discount margin, did not rise as much as anticipated in the month of January 2026, as demand moderated widening and the overall yield of the catastrophe bond market ended the month only slightly higher at 8.87%, data from Plenum Investments shows.

Kevin O’Donnell, the CEO of reinsurer and third-party reinsurance capital manager RenaissanceRe, said today that none of the firm’s investor supported joint-ventures entered 2026 any smaller than they were last year, leading to an expectation of relatively stable fee income ahead.

RenaissanceRe, the global reinsurance company and third-party capital manager, established a new catastrophe bond managed account named the Stratos Fund in the second-half of 2025, raising $260.4 million for it, while increasing assets in other third-party capital and ILS vehicles and lifting fee income 31.8% in the fourth-quarter of the year.

Leadenhall Capital Partners, the London headquartered specialist insurance linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance related investments manager, has experienced particularly strong inflows of new capital across all its ILS fund strategies, growing its assets under management (AUM) to $5.72 billion by the end of 2025.

With surging issuance and demand from investors in 2025, it was the year that the original vision for what the catastrophe bond market could become was realised, as they cemented their position as core protection and became a truly established asset class, investment manager Twelve Securis has said.

With the insurance-linked securities (ILS) space continuing to gain significant momentum, reinsurance giant Swiss Re and GAM Investments have affirmed their commitment to continue developing new products and identifying opportunities within the ILS market.