Data from our insurance-linked securities (ILS) focused sister site, Artemis, shows that catastrophe bond and related ILS issuance surpassed $3.5 billion in the first-quarter of 2022, taking the outstanding market to a new record high of approximately $37.5 billion.
Across the range of traditional 144a property catastrophe bonds, privately placed cat bonds and also any cat bond structures covering other lines of insurance or reinsurance business (life/health/specialty etc), issuance exceeded $3.5 billion, making it the third most active Q1 ever, in terms of risk capital issued.
Property catastrophe bond issuance was particularly strong in Q1 2022 at $3 billion, which is up on the same period last year, but below the record set in Q1 2020.
Year-on-year, private, or cat bond lite issuance increased slightly to $240 million, while $331 million of diversifying cat bond deals covering other lines of insurance or reinsurance also came to market. This included a UK terrorism risk deal from Pool Re, and a Vitality healthcare ILS transaction from prolific sponsor Aetna.
While first-quarter issuance itself did not break any records, it has set the tone for a strong year and it will be interesting to see if momentum continues through the second-quarter, which is typically the busiest time for the sector.
What the $3.5 billion of Q1 issuance has ensured, however, is that the outstanding market has grown in size by almost 5% from the end of 2021 to a huge $35.7 billion.
It’s worth noting that the Artemis Deal Directory shows that roughly $4 billion of deals are set to mature in the second-quarter, so it’s going to take an above-average Q2 for the market to achieve outright growth at the half-way stage.
For full details of first-quarter 2022 cat bond and related ILS issuance, including a breakdown of deal flow by factors such as perils, triggers, expected loss, and pricing, as well as analysis of the issuance trends seen by month and year.
Download your free copy of Artemis’ Q1 2022 Cat Bond & ILS Market Report here.
You can download copies of all of Artemis’ catastrophe bond market reports by visiting the archive page.
