Twelve Capital to offer its growing UCITS cat bond fund in Aus & NZ

Twelve Capital, the Zurich headquartered insurance and reinsurance linked investment fund manager, is to expand its offering to investors in Australia and New Zealand to include its UCITS catastrophe bond fund, which is a strategy the manager has been successfully growing recently.

Back at the end of January, Twelve Capital reported that it had grown its UCITS catastrophe bond fund strategy thanks to new inflows from investor capital raising, taking the total close to US $550 million.

Now, the ILS fund manager has reported further growth of assets for its UCITS cat bond fund to more than $600 million and its intention to offer the strategy into the Australia and New Zealand investment markets.

Twelve Capital had partnered with capital and investment advisory and placement firm Allen Partners to increase its ILS fund distribution efforts in Australia and New Zealand before.

Ever since it has seen expanding interest from institutional investors in the cat bond fund strategies, with its overall cat bond strategy assets now sitting at over $1.3 billion, split across the UCITS fund and various institutional mandates.

The ILS managers says on the prospects for catastrophe bonds in general, “Twelve Capital expects further strong growth in the Cat Bond sector as the asset class has performed well during recent volatility and provides a valuable source of income and diversification for portfolios.”

Hence, to capitalise on and serve expected growing investor demand for catastrophe bonds, Twelve Capital is expanding access to its Cat Bond UCITS fund offering to Australia and New Zealand.

Tom Pascarella, Partner with Allen Partners, Sydney explained, “With the growing sophistication of mid-tier and smaller institutional investors in this market, and a greater imperative for true diversification for all investors, we are very pleased with this new offering which we believe is a timely and important building block for asset allocators.”

Florian Steiger, who manages Twelve Capital’s cat bond strategy, said, “The central Cat Bond investment proposition has held during this period of extreme COVID-19 led market volatility with the asset class outperforming traditional financial markets, whilst exhibiting a low correlation to broader financial markets. Investor demand continues to be solid and the recent volatility in traditional financial markets again highlighted the benefit of having a diversifying strategy as part of any portfolio. With the benefit of significant datapoints across financial markets, Cat Bonds have demonstrated their ability to reduce volatility in portfolios during recent months.”

“Twelve Capital is a leading manager for liquid Cat Bond strategies for professional investors with offerings both in UCITS and managed account format,” added Urs Ramseier, CEO and CIO of Twelve Capital. “This recent demand shows the continued growth and recognition of Twelve Capital in the Insurance-Linked Securities investor community.”