ESG investment in insurance-linked securities (ILS)

Plenum Investments, the Zurich based specialist catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment manager, has announced the appointment of Dr. Andreas Rickert as a new member of its Board of Directors.

London headquartered specialty insurance and reinsurance firm Beazley is moving its ESG consortium out of the Lloyd’s Syndicate In A Box (SIAB) framework to sit under its third-party capital backed Smart Tracker syndicate 5623.

Despite the backlash against environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing in certain parts of the United States and elsewhere, capital raising for ESG investments, funds and strategies continues apace, and for investors ESG remains a key driver of allocations.

The design of the recently announced Climate Resilient Development Bond (CRD Bond), an insurance-linked security (ILS) hybrid that integrates catastrophe bond protection and investment in climate resilience, was driven in part by the trend towards risks becoming uninsurable, according to Julian Enoizi, Global Head of Public Sector at Guy Carpenter.

A new financial structure that can provide community-based climate insurance or risk transfer protection from the capital markets, while incorporating resilience, advanced funding for loss-prevention and mitigation, through an insurance-linked security (ILS) designed structure has been proposed.

Bill Dubinsky, Chief Executive Officer of Gallagher Securities, has cautioned that building in more ESG features is potentially helpful but “by no means a guaranteed win-win” for the catastrophe bond product, or for ILS more generally.

RenaissanceRe, the Bermuda headquartered reinsurance firm with a significant third-party ILS capital management unit, is partnering with Moody’s Analytics to benchmark the environmental impact of risks within its treaty reinsurance portfolios.

Twelve Capital, the insurance, reinsurance, catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) focused investment manager, has highlighted the importance of impact grading and ESG scoring, while finding in a study that the top-rated companies tend to outperform those that score more poorly.

PCS worked with Ariel Re and the structurer, Howden Tiger Capital Markets & Advisory, of the reinsurer’s Titania Re catastrophe bond issuance to create the innovative carbon offset feature, discusses Tom Johansmeyer, Head of PCS, a Verisk business.

Bermuda’s insurance and reinsurance market is readily taking steps to embrace ESG within their business models, but there is a lot to do and the work can become very technical, according to Marisa Savage at PwC Bermuda.