ILW news

Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, the more hedge fund focused part of the global asset manager, has maintained its strongly overweight conviction on the catastrophe bond asset class, finding their returns still appealing for investors despite generally lower yields than two years ago.

The Ambassador US mutual catastrophe bond fund strategy operated by Embassy Asset Management grew its total insurance-linked securities (ILS) assets under management by approximately 23% in the last quarter of record. Its cat bond holdings have continued to grow taking the fund’s AUM to $537 million by the end of June.

The supply-demand balance for global non-marine retrocession continued to tilt in buyers’ favour, as cedants were presented with opportunities to expand their retro purchases at the mid-year reinsurance renewals and some market participants took a commercial view on collateral trapping, according to Gallagher Re.

Property Claim Services (PCS), the unit of Verisk that is a provider of industry loss estimates and loss data to the reinsurance and ILS industry globally, has hired Harry White as its new Head of Commercial Strategy, while also naming Ted Gregory as its new Head of Research and Operations.

Analysts from KBW have said that reinsurance executives they met with recently are mostly expecting the June 1 renewals to see property catastrophe rates down around 10% on a risk-adjusted basis, but with significant variation by layer and top-layers where catastrophe bonds and industry-loss warranties (ILWs) sit to see larger declines.

Robust catastrophe bond issuance in the first and now second quarter of 2025 seems to have taken some of the excess cash out of the market, leading to a little more firmness in pricing of late, K2 Advisors, the hedge fund focused investment management unit of Franklin Templeton has noted.

Acrisure Re, the reinsurance broking division of global firm Acrisure, has made some key hires in Bermuda, taking Roman Romeo, who joins the company as Head of Acrisure Re Bermuda, as well as Barry Gordon, a specialist in broking industry-loss warranty (ILW) instruments, from rival Aon.

The Ambassador US mutual catastrophe bond fund strategy operated by advisor Embassy Asset Management has now expanded its insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund’s assets under management to $428 million, with expansion across the portfolio and more industry-loss warranty (ILW) investments made as well.

Artemis has learned that Alex Mican, the Head of PCS Global Strategy and Growth at Verisk Claims, is departing the company.

K2 Advisors, the hedge fund focused investment management unit of Franklin Templeton, continues to overweight most insurance-linked securities (ILS), but in its outlook for 2025 notes that meaningful catastrophe bond issuance is required to absorb cash in the marketplace.