Strong need for mainland China to tap the capital markets: ILS Asia 2021
Mr. Simon Lam, Executive Director, General Business at the Hong Kong Insurance Authority, expects the region’s new ILS regime to “hit the ground running” as mainland China’s insurance market growth continues apace. With the issuance of Greater Bay Re Ltd., sponsored by China Re, expected soon as the first catastrophe bond to be issued out of Hong Kong, the insurance-linked securities (ILS) universe has a new domicile to choose from. Like Singapore, Hong Kong’s regime offers a grant scheme which covers some of the issuance costs of cat bond transactions,
Jamaica’s World Bank catastrophe bond could upsize to $185m
The first catastrophe bond for Jamaica, which as we were first to report ten days ago launched as a $175 million IBRD CAR 130 transaction with the support of the World Bank, is now said by our sources to have a chance of closing a little larger, at $185 million in size. The $175 million or greater catastrophe bond seeks a capital markets backed source of named tropical storm and hurricane disaster insurance protection for the government of Jamaica, on a parametric trigger basis. As we’d also reported recently, important grant agreements had been
Cat bonds still attractive vs corporate credit despite spread tightening: K2
While catastrophe bond and insurance-linked security (ILS) spreads have tightened during the second-quarter of 2021, hedge fund specialist manager K2 Advisors believes that they remain attractive relative to corporate credit and are a strategy investors should be focusing on. Given the still uncertain world, as the recovery from the pandemic continues but challenges related to that and central bank policy remain, the hedge fund focused asset manager, which is a unit of investment firm Franklin Templeton, believes investors should be looking to focus their hedge fund investments on alpha generating