Insurance-linked investments

The catastrophe bond market has seen very attractive execution on behalf of sponsors so far this year, with a number of factors driving this that have all resulted in abundant capital being available to settle new cat bond issuances, typically at larger sizes and lower pricing.

The entry of market makers to enhance liquidity options in the secondary market for trading catastrophe bonds would be a dream come true, speakers suggested at the SIFMA ILS 2025 conference in Miami yesterday.

Qube Research & Technologies (QRT), a global quantitative and systematic investment manager that specialises in a technology and data-driven approach to allocation across liquid asset classes, has hired Securis catastrophe bond portfolio management specialist Raphael Rayees, the company has confirmed.

If the mid-year 2025 reinsurance renewals see relatively flat pricing, commentary from the recent AIFA conference by analysts at Autonomous Research suggests this could be a catalyst for more capital coming off the sidelines and into the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market.

Discussing the road to a $200 billion insurance-linked securities (ILS) market at the SIFMA ILS 2025 conference in Miami today, speakers stressed that considered deployment of capital at reasonable pricing and terms will be critical to continuing and perhaps accelerating the current growth trajectory.

RenaissanceRe, the Bermuda-based reinsurance company and third-party ILS capital manager, has now officially launched its first UCITS compliant property catastrophe bond fund strategy, the RenaissanceRe Medici UCITS Fund, with $340 million of capital allocated, confirming our reporting from three months ago.

The catastrophe bond market is on-track for a stunning first-quarter of activity in 2025, with the Q1 issuance record already broken and the three-month period now projected to see more than $6 billion of cat bond risk capital issued, Artemis’ data shows.

MLC Asset Management, an Australian investment arm of Insignia Financial Group, has launched a new multi-manager insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund offering, the MLC Reinsurance Investment Fund, which marks the firm’s first dedicated ILS fund strategy that is being offered to institutional investors.

The overall yield of the catastrophe bond market stood at 10.44% at the end of February 2025 according to data from specialist manager Plenum Investments, with the company explaining that opposing forces are driving the cat bond market yield sideways at this time.

Oxbridge Re Ltd., the Cayman Islands based reinsurance company, has now confirmed its two tranche offering of tokenized reinsurance securities that will fund its collateralized reinsurance sidecar vehicle Oxbridge Re NS for 2025, with 20% and 42% return targets.