Cat bond news

New York based Stone Ridge Asset Management, provider of mutual fund investments in alternative risk exposures including reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS), has passed the $2 billion mark between its three ILS funds for the first time.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services (S&P), the most active credit rating agency for catastrophe bond issues, has affirmed the ratings of the $300m Nakama Re Ltd. (Series 2013-1) Japan earthquake catastrophe bond, after undergoing its annual reset.

Alternative reinsurance capital and insurance-linked securities (ILS) could command 50% or even more of global property catastrophe reinsurance market limit as the ILS investor base continues to grow, Brett Houghton of Fermat Capital said at a recent event.

Rating agency A.M. Best has published and is seeking comments on a new draft rating criteria which we believe to be the first to specifically target insurance-linked funds, including those investing in catastrophe bonds, ILS and collateralized reinsurance.

Insurance-linked securities (ILS) have seen rapidly growing capital inflows from a varied investor base, but broker Guy Carpenter (GC) feels it’s the expanding and diversified manner with which ILS is accessing reinsurance risk that has been most notable in 2014.

The recently completed Golden State Re II Ltd. catastrophe bond, sponsored by the California State Compensation Insurance Fund (SCIF), demonstrated the “rapidly changing dynamics in the ILS landscape over the last three years,” according to WCMA’s Tony Ursano.

Pioneer Investments, a U.S. based mutual fund manager with a number of strategies that already include exposure to insurance-linked securities and reinsurance-linked assets, has filed documents with the SEC for a new interval ILS fund, its first dedicated ILS strategy.

As we wrote just last week, large pension funds continue to show their attraction to investments in reinsurance, insurance-linked securities (ILS) and catastrophe bonds, with new mandates and recent allocations still coming to light.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 28th September 2014, on catastrophe bonds, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics, from the last seven days on Artemis. To ensure you never miss a thing  subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates.

The United Nations Climate Summit, held in New York this week, has seen the unveiling of a coalition convened to examine how to embed climate and disaster risk stress testing within banking and securities regulation, investment and accounting practices.