spreads

The recent stabilisation of pricing in the catastrophe bond issuance market is a positive signal for the broader catastrophe reinsurance market, suggesting that technical levels have been reached and capital providers will go no lower, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley.

The decline in catastrophe bond and insurance-linked security (ILS) spreads and premiums over the last year has been well document, with some tranches seeing 40% declines in pricing over comparable issuance a year earlier.

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.

2012 saw rollercoaster-like conditions for secondary catastrophe bond trading as the market saw ups and downs over the course of what was a very good year for primary cat bond issuance. With primary cat bond issuance high and capital readily available to put to work in new transactions at the start of the year, the […]

The average expected losses, as measured at deal issuance, of the outstanding catastrophe bond market remained relatively static throughout 2012, according to data from insurance-linked securities consultancy Lane Financial LLC. In its latest quarterly ILS market update report data shows that the average expected loss has risen by just .01 over the course of the year. […]

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 […]

We’ve written a lot lately about the gradual decline in secondary catastrophe bond prices and the downward pressure on the catastrophe bond price return index, our most recent article on this here. We’ve focused on the higher than normal primary cat bond market issuance volume as the main cause for reduced interest in secondary cat […]

The 11th March earthquake which struck Japan causing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage and killing tens of thousands of people also made an impact on the catastrophe bond market, particularly on the pricing spread between their bid and ask prices.