Property cat bond issuance surpasses $10 billion already in 2023

Property catastrophe bond issuance in 2023 has now exceeded the $10 billion mark, and so is well on track to beat the previous annual record of $12.5 billion seen in 2021, Artemis’ data shows.

The Artemis Q2 2023 Catastrophe Bond and related insurance-linked securities (ILS) Market Report showed that property cat bond issuance reached $9.7 billion in the first half of the year, which is a record for the period.

But following the completion of two deals in July, the $100 million Purple Re Ltd. (Series 2023-2) from Slide Insurance Company, and the $250 million Wrigley Re Ltd. (Series 2023-1) from Gryphon Mutual (Blackstone’s real estate captive), issuance for these types of deals has now surpassed $10 billion.

This is just the third time in the market’s history that property cat bond issuance has totalled more than $10 billion in a single year, after the record $12.5 billion in 2021 and the $11 billion seen in 2020.

The Artemis Deal Directory reveals that so far this year, 58 catastrophe bond transactions have completed, and 46 of these are traditional 144a property cat bonds, with the remainder being privately placed deals, or deals covering non-catastrophe risks such as Beazley’s two cyber ILS deals.

Year-to-date, total cat bond issuance stands at roughly $10.7 billion, with roughly $700 million of this coming from either cat bond lites or deals covering non-cat risks, and $10 billion covering property catastrophe risks.

The $50 million Gateway Re Ltd. (Series 2023-3) transaction from Anchor Re also went live today, lifting issuance higher still.

You can analyse issuance by type of cat bond transaction using our chart (click the image below for an interactive version). Using this chart you can filter types of cat bond transactions in, or out of the data by clicking on the key.

As we discussed recently, the Artemis community is forecasting that the property cat market will remain busy through the rest of 2023, with a recent poll revealing that the majority expect issuance to exceed $15 billion.

In fact, 40% expect $15 billion to $17.5 billion of issuance, and 12% anticipate property cat bond issuance of $17.5 billion or more.

Given the exceptionally strong start to the year, it’s looking increasingly likely that this will be a record year for total cat bond issuance and also property cat bond issuance.

All of our charts and visualisations are kept up to date, as new catastrophe bond issuances are completed, or as older issues mature and roll-off risk. View our full range of catastrophe bond market charts here.