pricing

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) has again mentioned catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS) in its latest Financial Stability report update, highlighting the risk that investors are underpricing cat bonds.

In recent days the lowest yielding earthquake catastrophe bonds in the ILS markets history have priced, with U.S. primary insurer State Farm’s $300m Merna Re V Ltd. U.S. earthquake cat bond offering the lowest coupon ever seen for a pure quake bond.

In its latest look at the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market reinsurer Swiss Re suggests that the tight spread environment seen on cat bond issues through 2013 so far is set to continue. Tighter spreads and lower pricing has been driven by investor demand providing an attractive environment for cat bond sponsors.

The article we published yesterday on the average upsizing of catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securitizations (listed in our Deal Directory) so far in 2013 drew a number of questions. Some readers wanted to know how the pricing for these transactions had changed during the time they were offered in the market to investors, so we’ve […]

Both the primary and secondary catastrophe bond markets were subdued in December as the markets participants continued to assess the fall-out and industry losses that hurricane Sandy had caused. Many insurers and reinsurers had been forced to put their planning and purchasing of U.S. hurricane reinsurance and retrocession on hold and this is thought to […]

2012 has been an interesting year as far as transaction pricing and the spreads of outstanding catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities have developed. Spreads of new cat bond transactions have been tightening throughout the year and this is a trend that reinsurer Swiss Re said would likely continue into 2013 at their recent insurance-linked securities […]

Normally by this stage of the month we have a pretty good idea how insurance-linked security and catastrophe bond funds have performed in the prior month, but this time Sandy has muddied the waters somewhat. ILS fund managers are being slower to publish their funds October returns as calculating the impact of mark-to-market losses caused […]

One of the issues we discuss regularly on Artemis is the fluctuation in secondary market outstanding catastrophe bond pricing over the course of the year and how seasonal weather patterns, such as the U.S. hurricane season, impact pricing. As with any secondary market, there are effects that change pricing across wide swathes of the marketplace, […]

Last month the secondary catastrophe bond market slowed down, with trading volumes dropping considerably from the relatively active August according to market participants. The slowdown has a lot to do with seasonality, having just passed the peak of the hurricane season, and with no real impact from any storms, cat bond investors and traders are […]

September is one of the peak months of the U.S. hurricane season and so catastrophe bond issuance activity is typically slow and secondary market cat bond trading is often driven by the threat of any tropical storms approaching the U.S. coastline. This results in climbing secondary market prices, particularly in cat bonds with U.S. hurricane […]