reinsurance

Australian primary insurance group IAG has renewed its main catastrophe reinsurance tower for 2026 at the same size as the prior year providing occurrence protection for two events of up to $10 billion, while also expanding its quota share reinsurance to now cover 25% of its consolidated business including the recently acquired RACQ Insurance.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund sector gained 0.81% on average for November 2025, lifting the group of cat bond and ILS funds tracked by the ILS Advisers Fund Index to an average 11-month return of 10.40%.

Ascot Group, the specialist global re/insurance underwriter, has appointed Ashleigh Edwards as Group Head of Ceded Reinsurance, where she will oversee the firm’s global ceded reinsurance strategy and harmonize it with Leadline Capital Partners, the company’s third-party capital management platform.

The outstanding market for collateralized reinsurance sidecar structures has continued to grow at pace thanks to investor interest in the structures, with the latest estimate from Aon Securities putting invested capital in sidecar vehicles at a new high of $19.6 billion.

Alternative reinsurance capital, so that deployed through insurance-linked securities and related collateralized structures, reached a new high of $124 billion as of September 30th 2025, according to Aon and the broker expects the growth trend to persist as third-party investors show “consistent” appetite for returns from the sector.

The latest data from the Plenum CAT Bond UCITS Fund Indices shows that the entire group averaged a 9.99% return for the latest available twelve month period, while the lower and higher-risk cohorts of UCITS cat bond funds each averaged a 10.02% return.

Insurance Capital Markets Research (ICMR) has announced that its (Re)Insurance Specialty Index (RISX) delivered a 22.3% net total return in 2025, while the organisation has also forecasted that the Lloyds of London re/insurance market could deliver a return on capital of around 20% again for full-year 2025.

TD Insurance has now successfully secured a slightly less than targeted C$115 million of annual aggregate reinsurance from the catastrophe bond market through its second sponsorship, while the notes to be issued under the MMIFS Re Ltd. (Series 2026-1) offering will pay investors a spread roughly 29% above the mid-point of initial guidance.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending January 4th 2026, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics. To ensure you never miss a thing subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates or get our email alerts for every article we publish.

2025 is the year all headline catastrophe bond records fell, and the first time annual issuance exceeded $20 billion, rising by 45% year-on-year to $25.6 billion across full 144A and private transactions we analysed. It was supported by record fourth quarter issuance of over $7 billion, the fifth-largest quarter ever, Artemis’ new quarterly catastrophe bond […]