reinsurance

Palomar Insurance Holdings is on track to achieve, and possibly exceed, its previously guided reinsurance pricing improvement of flat to down 5% for its 2025 renewal, thanks to favourable pricing on its latest catastrophe bond and a newly structured Hawaii excess-of-loss treaty, CEO Mac Armstrong told analysts during the company’s Q1 2025 earnings call.

As climate risk escalates, insurers and reinsurers are increasingly relying on catastrophe modelling to navigate uncertainty. For insurance-linked securities (ILS) managers, these tools go beyond guidance, they are foundational to underwriting discipline, portfolio construction, and investor capital protection, according to a new report from LGT ILS Partners.

Verisk, the data analytics and technology provider, has unveiled a first-of-its-kind catastrophe model designed to quantify the financial impacts of strikes, riots, and civil commotion (SRCC) in the United States.

The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA), the residual market property insurer for the State of Texas, has increased the size of its new Bluebonnet Re Ltd. (Series 2025-1) catastrophe bond issuance for a second time, with now $550 million of reinsurance expected to be secured, Artemis can report.

Analysts at J.P. Morgan believe that reinsurance pricing has reverted back to 2023 levels, which was the beginning of recent market hardening. Data suggests the catastrophe bond market has softened a little more, or ahead of the traditional market’s pace, being closer to 2022 levels at this time.

Everest Group reported a 95% jump in ceded property catastrophe written premiums to cells of its Mt. Logan Re Ltd. third-party capitalised sidecar-like structure in the first-quarter of 2025, as more excess-of-loss business was shared with the investors backing the Mt. Logan Capital Management strategies.

White Mountains reported that in the first-quarter of 2025 its investment into the Outrigger Re collateralized reinsurance sidecar, that supports its property and casualty insurance and reinsurance subsidiary Ark, was impacted by the California wildfires which contributed to a loss for the sidecar and an elevated 166% combined ratio for the period.

Having competed with demand for a couple of months, seasonality seemingly took over in the catastrophe bond market in April 2025, as spread widening returned and lifted the overall yield of the catastrophe bond market to 10.86% by May 2nd, according to the latest data from Plenum Investments.

Hong Kong’s Insurance Authority (IA) has welcomed the recent issuance of the latest catastrophe bond sponsored by Peak Re, the US $50 million Black Kite Re Limited (Series 2025-1) transaction, while also noting that the deal represents a sign of the maturity under its insurance-linked securities (ILS) regulatory regime.

Fidelis Insurance has returned to the catastrophe bond market with an initial $75 million target to renew one of its maturing and also recently loss-affected sources of worldwide aggregate retrocession through a Herbie Re Ltd. (Series 2025-1)  cat bond issuance, Artemis has learned.