UCITS cat bond fund assets rise 6.5% YTD in 2026, near $20.5bn after April

Catastrophe bond funds in the UCITS format added over $650 million in assets just in the month of April, as the combined assets under management (AUM) of the UCITS cat bond fund sector reached almost $20.5 billion, having now expanded by 6.5% so far in 2026.

Recall that, these UCITS catastrophe bond funds grew strongly through 2025, adding roughly $5.3 billion or 39% across the asset base of the UCITS structured cat bond fund strategies.

The expansion continued in the first-quarter, with UCITS cat bond fund assets growing to over $20 billion for the first time ever in February, but then declining slightly to around $19.8 billion by the end of March 2026.

The growth trend returned in spades in April, as the trend accelerated once again and the segment added meaningful new assets to help in absorbing the busy catastrophe bond market issuance pipeline, while earnings from positive returns will also have boosted AUM further during the month.

The combined AUM figure stood at just over $20.46 billion, so practically $20.5 billion, as of April 30th, across the group of twenty pure UCITS catastrophe bond funds.

Impressively, the combined AUM of the UCITS cat bond funds grew 3.3%, or just over $650 million, in just the last month.

Analyse UCITS catastrophe bond fund assets under management using these charts (data kindly shared by our partner Plenum Investments AG, a specialist insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund manager).

With strong growth continuing in the cat bond asset class, it gives fund managers room to accept new inflows, helping to lift AUM.

Of course, this also adds to pricing pressure during periods when issuance does not keep up with sector capital levels, something that high levels of cat bond maturities is also exacerbating in bringing more liquidity and cash to the market.

UCITS cat bond fund assets under management as a group have now grown by 133% since the end of 2022, 87% since the end of 2023 and have added an impressive over 48% in AUM since just the start of 2025.

Within the UCITS cat bond fund sector, the top-six funds that each have over a billion dollars of AUM contributed a significant $16.6 billion of the total sector AUM as of the end of April.

The top-four largest UCITS cat bond funds between them command $13.75 billion of the total sector AUM at this time.

Based on Artemis’ measure for the outstanding cat bond market, the UCITS cat bond funds combined AUM contributed almost 32% of the market at the end of April, up slightly from around 31% at the end of March.

Analyse UCITS catastrophe bond fund assets under management using our charts here.

You can also analyse UCITS cat bond fund performance, using the Plenum CAT Bond UCITS Fund Indices.