Catastrophe bond news

With the day of the event approaching quickly, we are delighted to announce another four expert speakers for our catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market conference in London on Tuesday September 3rd. Tickets for Artemis London 2024 are starting to sell fast, so please register soon if you want to attend.

Global reinsurer Hannover Re has seen continued success in its business servicing and facilitating transactions in the collateralised reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market in the first-half of 2024, with it notably beating its own full-year record for catastrophe bond limit fronted for already this year.

US primary insurer Allstate has revealed that 20 July catastrophe events drove $587 million of losses for the company, with an initial estimate that $226 million came from hurricane Beryl’s impacts in the United States, a figure that could further erode some of the retention beneath its aggregate catastrophe bonds.

Seasonality has started to become visible in the overall yield of the catastrophe bond market, with the figure sliding slightly in the month of July 2024 to end the period at a still historically very high 13.54%.

After a record-setting first-half to 2024, the catastrophe bond market is on track to break another primary issuance record this year, while the secondary market has already experienced record high trading volumes, according to global reinsurance firm Swiss Re.

The assets under management of the Icosa Investments catastrophe bond fund strategy have already surpassed the $200 million level, as the manager has seen continued success since its launch at the start of 2024.

Today, we are announcing more of our expert speakers who will be joining our catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market conference in London on Tuesday September 3rd. Tickets for Artemis London 2024 are starting to sell fast, so please register soon if you want to attend.

Challenger Life, the Australian life and retirement income underwriter and investor, expanded its insurance-linked investment allocation by around 37% in the last financial year, with it now amounting to roughly US $490 million across catastrophe bonds and a newly added sidecar investment, while life insurance investments shrank slightly to US $61 million.

Catastrophe bond funds in the UCITS format had reached an average return year-to-date of 6.35% by August 2nd 2024, which is the second-highest annual return since the Plenum CAT Bond UCITS Fund Indices started tracking the market in 2011.

Colonial First State, one of the largest Australian institutional investors, is looking to deploy some of its near US $100 billion of assets into the catastrophe bond market, according to a report from Bloomberg.