Best of Artemis, week ending January 19th 2025

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending January 19th 2025, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics. To ensure you never miss a thing subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates or get our email alerts for every article we publish.

1. Catastrophe bond price movements due to LA wildfire exposure
   A number of catastrophe bonds experienced negative secondary market price movements due to potential exposure to aggregate attachment erosion, or actual losses, from the Los Angeles and Southern California wildfires. We detailed the biggest movers, based on information seen and conversations with our sources in the cat bond market.
2. Read our news and analysis on the Los Angeles wildfires, including industry loss estimates seen so far
   With numerous stories on the wildfires in our top-10 most read of last week, we felt it easier to direct you to the archive page for this topic.
3. NFIP’s Helene loss estimate rises to $6.75bn. Two cat bonds extended with partial repayment
   We learned that FEMA has increased its estimate for National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) losses from hurricane Helene, raising the figure to $6.75 billion and as a result two FloodSmart Re catastrophe bond tranches have had their maturity dates extended, with partial repayments of principal to be made.
4. Stone Ridge marks mutual cat bond / ILS funds the most on LA wildfires
   Stone Ridge Asset Management, the New York based alternative risk premia focused investment manager, appears to have taken the strongest action in terms of marking down its mutual catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds on potential exposure to the California wildfires, while most other strategies in the market have barely moved.
5. Fermat announces new range of commingled ILS strategies, two investor relations hires
   Fermat Capital Management, the specialist manager of catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) investments, has launched a new range of commingled ILS strategies already supporting around $2 billion in assets, as well as two key hires to its global investor relations team.
6. CEA mulls second-event tower, with potential role for reinsurance / cat bonds
   The California Earthquake Authority (CEA) is discussing the need for either a pre-funded subsequent or second-event funding tower (with risk transfer and reinsurance perhaps a part of it), or the infrastructure for one, that would support its functions after a significant earthquake loss that depletes its claims paying ability.
7. UCITS cat bond funds grow 26% in 2024, end year with $13.8bn under management
   Catastrophe bond funds in the UCITS format continued their strong growth through the end of last year, reaching a new high of just over $13.8 billion in cat bond assets under management, which represents very impressive 26% growth through 2024.
8. Elementum launches Enhanced Yield Strategy, expands collateralized reinsurance investment range
   Elementum Advisors, LLC, the alternative investment manager that specialises in collateralized natural catastrophe event reinsurance investments, has unveiled a new strategy that enhances the firm’s higher-yield strategy complement.
9. ILS NYC 2025: Announcing our full conference agenda. Register soon if you want to attend
   We are delighted to reveal the full agenda for our upcoming catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) conference. Artemis ILS NYC 2025 is being held in New York on February 7th. Tickets are still available but selling fast, so please register soon to ensure you can join us at the event.
10. Howden names Kusche Chairman, HCMA, Europe. Rosenberg becomes Co-Head of Global ILS
    Howden’s capital markets and insurance-linked securities (ILS) specialist unit, Howden Capital Markets & Advisory (HCMA), has announced that Philipp Kusche, who serves as the firm’s Global Head of ILS & Capital Solutions, will take on an expanded role as Chairman of HCMA, Europe, with Mitchell Rosenberg becoming Co-Head of Global ILS.

This is not every article published on Artemis during the last week, just the most popular among our readers over the last seven days. There were 38 new articles published in the last week.

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