AXIS Capital, the global specialty insurance and reinsurance underwriter, has now upsized its target for its latest catastrophe bond, increasing it to now seek $200 million in North American named storm and earthquake protection from the Northshore Re II Ltd. (Series 2025-1) issuance, Artemis has learned.
At the same time as increasing the target size from the initial $150 million to now $200 million, we understand that the price guidance for the Northshore Re II 2025-1 cat bond notes has fallen to the bottom end of the initial range.AXIS Capital returned to the catastrophe bond market for what will become its seventh issuance to-date, all of which have been under the Northshore Re branding.
Details of every AXIS sponsored cat bond can be found in our Deal Directory.
Initially, AXIS Capital was seeking $150 million or more in retrocessional reinsurance from this Northshore Re II 2025-1 catastrophe bond, with the coverage set to protect the firm’s underwriting subsidiaries, including its AXIS Insurance arm, reinsurer AXIS Re, as well as its E&S company and Lloyd’s syndicates.
This cat bond will provide AXIS and subsidiaries with multi-year and fully-collateralized protection against losses from US named storms (inc. Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands), as well as U.S. & Canada earthquake risks, across a three year term to April 7th 2028, on a weighted industry-loss trigger and per-occurrence basis.
Now, we’re told the target size has been raised to $200 million, as AXIS looks to upsize on the cat bond protection it had in place from its Northshore Re II Ltd. (Series 2022-1) that matures around the middle of this year, although that soon-to-mature cat bond deal was an annual aggregate transaction in coverage terms.
The now $200 million in Series 2025-1 Class A notes that are being offered by Northshore Re II come with an initial expected loss of 2.1%.
The notes were first offered to cat bond funds and investors with price guidance in a range from 5% to 5.75%, but we’re now told that the guidance has been fixed at the low-end of that range, at 5%.
It’s good to see AXIS looking to capitalise on catastrophe bond market conditions to lock-in more protection than originally targeted at what looks set to be attractive pricing for the retrocessional reinsurance coverage.
You can read all about this Northshore Re II Ltd. (Series 2025-1) catastrophe bond from AXIS Capital and every other cat bond deal ever issued in the extensive Artemis Deal Directory.
