End of week Artemis update - Mar 15th 2024

Here's our latest wrap-up of key news from the week.

This week, ILS market participants met in Miami at the SIFMA ILS conference, where attendees heard investment managers speaking of the fundamentals being in place for a $20bn cat bond year.

Attendees also heard from tropical cyclone forecaster Phil Klotzbach, who highlighted the expectation for La Nina to develop and that conditions suggest their could be lower odds for storms to re-curve out into the Atlantic this year.

Finally from SIFMA, a cyber cat bond panel discussed the importance of having a multi-model view of risk.

The catastrophe bond market continues to fire on all cylinders, with the pipeline building out further this week with numerous new deals.

Investment giant Brookfield has come to market seeking cat bond cover for its property investments, insurer Slide returned seeking its third cat bond deal, Mexico is back looking to renew its parametric World Bank cat bond, American European has entered the market for the first time, Florida Peninsula has launched its debut cat bond deal, American Coastal is back for a new cat bond, TWIA is seeking a $600m or bigger cat bond cover, and the SureChoice and Elevate reciprocal exchanges are back for more second event protection.

Also in cat bonds, SureChoice and Elevate priced their first event deal, the NCIUA priced its $450m cat bond, and Tokio Marine got its latest Kizuna cat bond priced at the low-end.

We also reported that UCITS cat bond fund assets surpassed a new record at $11.24bn, with two funds reaching the $3bn landmark, while prices have boosted UCITS cat bond returns so far this year.

Also notable was Schroders Capital's announcements that it hit a new $5bn milestone for its ILS assets, while also promoting members of its ILS team.

Investor PGGM surpassed $9bn in ILS assets and has been building-out its Nightingale Re strategy.

In an interview, MariaGiovanna Guatteri, CEO of Swiss Re Insurance-Linked Investment Advisors Corporation (SRILIAC), told us the market is building the foundations to make cat bonds a more broadly accepted asset class.

Finally, if you haven't seen them, Artemis has a wealth of data and analytics on the catastrophe bond and broader ILS market. View our charts and Deal Directory.

Catch up on our video interviews with ILS market leaders here.

If you prefer to listen, subscribe to our podcast series for audio interviews & additional special episodes.

We'll be back next week with more regular coverage.

We hope you have a safe & relaxing weekend.