Cat bond news

2012 was a unique year in the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond issuance market, with near record issuance, the market reaching a record size, new sponsors coming to market and repeat sponsors continuing to demonstrate their comfort with and commitment to ILS and cat bonds for risk transfer. As well as a healthy issuance side […]

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund management operation backed by German reinsurer Hannover Re is now up and running and open to investors. Luxembourg based asset management firm Leine Investment SICAV-SIF and managing partner Leine Investment General Partner S.à r.l. were established last year as 100% subsidiaries of Hannover Re with the aim of launching ILS funds […]

The insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market experienced a banner year in 2012, according to the latest market update report published today by reinsurer Swiss Re. As well as being a banner year, with the second highest issuance on record of $6.3 billion, 2012 was unique according to the reinsurer as the market was tested […]

Some of the latest pricing indications for secondary catastrophe bonds show that investors have real concerns that the final industry loss total from hurricane Sandy could be sufficiently high to trigger the Successor X Ltd. (Series 2011-3) Class V-F4 notes. The Successor notes are the last cat bond which is considered seriously at risk of […]

Here’s some more evidence of the increasing interest that large pension funds are showing in the catastrophe bond, insurance-linked securities and reinsurance-linked investment space. The New Zealand Superannuation Fund, a fund for the state-run retirement benefit (pension) available to all working New Zealanders, already has an allocation to cat bonds in its alternative investment portfolio […]

The Skyline Re Ltd. (Series 2013-1) private catastrophe bond placement, which we first wrote about back in December here, has been successfully completed. The transaction upsized from the $50m it was initially marketed at to complete at $72m of limit ($61.2m of notes issued). Private cat bond specialist Towers Watson Capital Markets (TWCM) structured, arranged and placed […]

Back in December we wrote that reinsurer Swiss Re had planned to redeem two tranches of mortality catastrophe bond notes issued through its Vita Capital IV Ltd. vehicle. It turns out we’d jumped the gun on one of those and according to a clarification published by rating agency S&P the $75m Series I Class E […]

Demonstrating the insurance-linked security and reinsurance-linked investment markets resilience to bounce back from events of the magnitude of hurricane Sandy, the average ILS fund returned, as measured by the Eurekahedge ILS Advisers Index, a very impressive 1% in December. This made December the second best monthly return performance of the ILS Advisers ILS fund tracking […]

The last seven days saw one of the biggest news stories of the reinsurance-linked investment markets relatively short history as 25% of ILS investment manager Nephila Capital was sold to private equity firm KKR. As always, you can read every market news story and article on the Artemis news blog, subscribe to our weekly email […]

Credit Suisse has issued an updated event report on hurricane Sandy in regards to the storms expected impact to the asset managers CS IRIS Low Volatility Plus fund, and as a result the DCG Iris ILS fund for which CS Iris is the master fund. Credit Suisse has increased its estimate of the insured industry […]