climate risk-linked securities

Global reinsurance company Hannover Re sees an opportunity to further develop the integration of resiliency features within catastrophe bonds, having received positive feedback from the market and clients since the transaction for the North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association (NCIUA), Executive Board Member Silke Sehm has told Artemis.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Protection (UNDRR) has published details of a proposal for a high-level Disaster Resilience Adaptation Financing (DRAF) structure that features an insurance-linked securities (ILS) vehicle, to support disaster risk insurance coverage and resilience adaptation financing.

Embedding disaster resiliency terms into catastrophe bonds and other insurance-linked securities (ILS) products could potentially unlock billions of dollars in funding for adaptation and risk reduction measures, according to Alissa Legenza, Member of the UNDRR Investor Advisory Board.

The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association (NCIUA) has become the first catastrophe bond sponsor to benefit from an issuance that has disaster-resilience features integrated in it, with its recent $600 million Cape Lookout Re Ltd. (Series 2025-1) the very first cat bond to include an additional resilience feature.

COP 29, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Baku, Azerbaijan, has drawn to a close with agreement on certain areas and progress being made on the much-discussed Loss and Damage, as well as the Global Shield, two programs of some relevance to insurance, reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) markets.

Analysts at Citigroup have highlighted a growing financing gap in climate adaptation efforts, saying that as this gap grows and steps to mitigate climate change remain at a pace considered too slow, there will be a need for increasing amounts of capital and catastrophe bonds are a useful structure that can be used in support.

In a perhaps surprising turn of events, the opening hours of the COP28 climate talks today have seen a landmark agreement to operationalise and provide initial funding for the much-discussed loss and damage fund, that is designed to help the countries that are most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

With the COP28 climate talks beginning this week, Moody’s Investors Service has taken a look at the climate and environmental exposure inherent within rated global debt issuance, finding that the total has doubled since 2015 when the Paris Agreement climate change accord was signed.

Re2 Capital has been launched by three well-known former employees of ILS manager Nephila Capital, with a mission to structure innovative climate risk transfer and financing solutions that can connect private investment capital and risk capacity to climate-linked opportunities.

The role of the capital markets in the world’s transition to a low carbon economy as we look to tackle the threats of the changing climate, is “absolutely fundamental,” according to Rowan Douglas, Head of the Climate and Resilience Hub at Willis Towers Watson (WTW), and Chairman of Willis Research Network.