Cat bond news

Yesterday’s significant earthquake in Japan is likely to increase an already relatively heavy first-quarter of catastrophe and other large losses for the global insurance and reinsurance industry, according to analysts at Bank of America, while Plenum Investments said no impact to the catastrophe bond market is expected.

Insurance, reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) markets hoping that some of Florida’s legislative actions targeted at reforming the challenged property insurance market might pass this year, look set to be disappointed again.

The UK’s top regulator recognises that the insurance-linked securities (ILS) regime in the country has faced challenges since its launch and wants to evolve the system to make for swifter and easier issuance conditions, to attract more ILS and catastrophe bond activity to be transacted there.

The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association (NCIUA) has lifted the upper-end target for its new Cape Lookout Re Ltd. (Series 2022-1) catastrophe bond issuance, with the deal now expected to close at up to $350 million in size.

U.S. primary insurer Safepoint Insurance Company has returned to the catastrophe bond market in search of $125 million or more in named storm reinsurance protection across its key US states, with a Manatee Re II Ltd. (Series 2022-1) cat bond for which it has returned to Bermuda to issue.

Rate increases alone are no longer considered sufficient to improve the underwriting results of insurance-linked securities managers and reinsurance firms, according to AM Best, who believes that after consecutive years of heavy catastrophe losses the only answer is continued improvement of the quality of portfolios of risk.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) sector continues to mature and as it does so new opportunities are presenting themselves, which senior Partners from global law firm Mayer Brown believe could help to stimulate continued market growth in ILS.

Direct-to-consumer and fast-growing insurtech Kin Insurance is entering the catastrophe bond market for the first time, seeking $100 million of Florida hurricane reinsurance protection with a Hestia Re Ltd. (Series 2022-1) issuance.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending March 13th 2022, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics. To ensure you never miss a thing subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates or get our email alerts for every article we publish.

The new Matterhorn Re Ltd. (Series 2022-1) catastrophe bond transaction from global reinsurance giant Swiss Re has now been priced and sources told Artemis that the issuance was upsized by 63% to $325 million in size, while both tranches of notes priced at the lower-ends of guidance.