Cat bond market buoyant as demand and investment returns rise
Demand for alternative capacity, sharply higher reinsurance rates and robust returns for capital providers helped drive first-half 2023 new issuance of catastrophe bonds to record levels.
A report last week from Swiss Re showed $9.85bn of new catastrophe bond issuance across 64 tranches of notes in the first six months of this year, which is a record for both the dollar amount and transactions. The previous high dollar volume was just over $8bn in first-half 2021.
The 2023 first-half total value alone would be the fourth-highest yearly total on record, and market sources expect the trajectory to continue.
“In the second quarter we saw a tremendous amount of activity, driven by a combination of capital coming into the marketplace from ILS fund managers and interest from cedents looking to diversify their risk transfer programmes”, in part due to the challenges they faced at 1 January 2023 renewals, said Paul Schultz, CEO of Aon Securities.
“The reinsurance market needed fresh capacity in reaction to inflation as well as the natural catastrophe activity the last few years. The capacity need caused increased rates, which succeeded in attracting fresh capital,” added Bill Dubinsky, managing director for Gallagher Re and CEO of Gallagher Securities.
The capacity providers are generally institutional money managers invested across asset classes, said Zach Breslin, capital markets leader for Lockton Re Capital Markets. “With the ILS market, they get diversification from their equity and debt positions” because insurance-linked securities are considered a “non-correlated” asset class to others such as debt and equity, he said.
The catastrophe bond market is also attractive for investors because in addition to the risk premium, they earn interest on the bond’s collateral funds. “The return that investors are getting is elevated by earning a good return on the collateral, in excess of 4% today, compared with closer to zero three years ago,” Schultz said.
Catastrophe bonds have attracted the majority of recent inflows into the ILS market, compared with other forms of alternative capital coverage such as sidecars and collateralised reinsurance that do not have secondary markets where they may be traded, Breslin said.
“Where the cat bond market really demonstrated its value was in the transparency of the product and the liquidity,” he said. Money managers have been “stung” previously by the performance of illiquid reinsurance assets, he added.
“Since cat bond funds have performed better than other ILS strategies in recent years, a large proportion of capital attracted into ILS has been directed to cat bond strategies,” Dubinsky said.
The catastrophe bond market is comprised mainly of protection for the peak perils of named windstorm and earthquake exposures in North America, Schultz said. However, there is a need for capacity for so-called secondary perils, such as severe convective storms and wildfires, he said. “Those needs will continue to grow,” added Schultz.
Cyber coverage is another possible avenue of expansion for catastrophe bonds, he said.
“Insurance risks beyond natural catastrophe, including cyber and casualty, are seeing cat bond activity, and we expect this trend to continue into 2024,” Dubinsky said. The first cyber catastrophe bonds were launched in January by Beazley and German reinsurer Hannover Re, and sources suggest there will be more such bonds.
The catastrophe bond market is expected to maintain its record pace for the second half of this year, hinging to a degree on the level of storm activity in the remainder of the hurricane season.
The catastrophe bond market can be “very sensitive to how the North Atlantic hurricane season plays out”, Schultz said.
“The signals we’re seeing is that the pipeline will continue to remain robust, and we don’t foresee any headwinds on the horizon,” Breslin said.
“The asset class is still very attractive from a risk spread and expected loss standpoint for investors,” said Jeff Mohrenweiser, senior director of global securities for Fitch Ratings.
The controversy surrounding troubled reinsurance intermediary Vesttoo, which matches capacity to non-catastrophe insurance-linked securities, will likely have little effect on the wider ILS market, he said.
“The third quarter is usually a slow period for cat bonds as it is difficult to place issues during the height of the hurricane season, so evidence of any market fallout will be muted,” Mohrenweiser said. He added that cat bonds usually house “hard assets” rather than letters of credit, which are at the centre of Vesttoo’s problems.
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