Reinsurance linked investment

Investment manager Amundi US has celebrated the one year anniversary of its newest dedicated mutual insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund strategy, the Pioneer Cat Bond Fund, saying that the strategy has now surpassed $150 million of assets and delivered a 1-year return of over 14.9%.

Risk capital and reinsurance solutions broker Augment Risk has launched a dedicated insurance-linked securities (ILS) offering, as it looks to break into the market for matching insurance risk with institutional capital.

Nascent Group, an insurance management and reinsurance transformer company launched last year by Andre Perez, has launched a new collateral monitoring feature to facilitate “smoother and more transparent ILS transactions” to the benefit of fund managers and investors in the space.

Catastrophe bond funds were a bright spot in the alternative UCITS investment fund space in 2023, as cat bond funds expanded strongly at a time when the wider UCITS segment experienced approximately $38 billion in outflows, according to Kepler Absolute Hedge.

The creditors in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case of insurtech Vesttoo are now trying mediation out, as a way to solve the sticking point over the consolidation of the estate, versus honouring the segregation of cell structures used for reinsurance transactions affected by fraudulent letters of credit (LOCs).

Hannover Re placed its K-Cessions quota share sidecar at US $757 million in size for 2024, shrinking the structure by 9% over the prior year. In an interview, Henning Ludolphs explained that despite some changes, the company has sufficient retrocession to take advantage of the hard reinsurance market environment this year.

France-headquartered global reinsurance firm SCOR has said today that it raised new third-party capital from risk partners in January 2024, while it also expanded the capacity arrangements it has with existing risk partners by 20%.

Artex Capital Solutions, the specialist unit of Artex Risk Solutions that creates and manages insurance-linked securities (ILS) and related structures for matching risk with capital, has appointed Christopher Wilson as its SVP Advisory and Head of Underwriting, based in Bermuda.

International specialty insurance and reinsurance group Chaucer has responded robustly to objections made by other creditors after its recent entry to the Vesttoo bankruptcy case, saying that the proposed bankruptcy plan has numerous issues and is “uncomfirmable.”

Having already set a new full-year record return by the end of November, the results of the final month of 2023 have lifted the average return of private ILS funds further above catastrophe bond funds, according to the Eurekahedge ILS Advisers Index.