Resilience bonds news

Global reinsurance company Hannover Re sees an opportunity to further develop the integration of resiliency features within catastrophe bonds, having received positive feedback from the market and clients since the transaction for the North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association (NCIUA), Executive Board Member Silke Sehm has told Artemis.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Protection (UNDRR) has published details of a proposal for a high-level Disaster Resilience Adaptation Financing (DRAF) structure that features an insurance-linked securities (ILS) vehicle, to support disaster risk insurance coverage and resilience adaptation financing.

Embedding disaster resiliency terms into catastrophe bonds and other insurance-linked securities (ILS) products could potentially unlock billions of dollars in funding for adaptation and risk reduction measures, according to Alissa Legenza, Member of the UNDRR Investor Advisory Board.

The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association (NCIUA) has become the first catastrophe bond sponsor to benefit from an issuance that has disaster-resilience features integrated in it, with its recent $600 million Cape Lookout Re Ltd. (Series 2025-1) the very first cat bond to include an additional resilience feature.

Analysts at Citigroup have highlighted a growing financing gap in climate adaptation efforts, saying that as this gap grows and steps to mitigate climate change remain at a pace considered too slow, there will be a need for increasing amounts of capital and catastrophe bonds are a useful structure that can be used in support.

The global natural catastrophe protection gap widened again in 2023, rising 5.2% to US $385 billion in premium equivalent terms, but at the same time Swiss Re reports that there are signs of more protection being available, which over time should see more losses covered by insurance and reinsurance.

The World Bank Group said today that it intends to build on its already available catastrophe insurance solutions, such as catastrophe bonds, to make access to disaster risk financing without adding debt a reality for member countries.

The gap between natural catastrophe exposure and how much of it is covered by insurance has widened in dollar terms, with the natural catastrophe protection gap now seen to be $368 billion by global reinsurance firm Swiss Re, who also says that catastrophe bonds and resilience bonds are valuable tools to deploy.

The design of the recently announced Climate Resilient Development Bond (CRD Bond), an insurance-linked security (ILS) hybrid that integrates catastrophe bond protection and investment in climate resilience, was driven in part by the trend towards risks becoming uninsurable, according to Julian Enoizi, Global Head of Public Sector at Guy Carpenter.

A new financial structure that can provide community-based climate insurance or risk transfer protection from the capital markets, while incorporating resilience, advanced funding for loss-prevention and mitigation, through an insurance-linked security (ILS) designed structure has been proposed.