April 2016/1

A group of seven cat bond-only funds tracked by Trading Risk has generated an average return of 0.79 percent for the first quarter, two-thirds ahead of the Q1 2015 figure of 0.27 percent

Strong bidding interest on the secondary cat bond market helped to counteract the influence of seasonality in early April

Lane Financial estimated the ILS market's turnover rate at about 20 percent or $4bn a year, after looking at 21 months of secondary trading data filed by the industry with US regulators

Willis Capital Markets & Advisory has been marketing two Resilience Re transactions to ILS investors in the past month, sources said

The first quarter saw an unusually high volume of Japanese typhoon bonds, as both Mitsui Sumitomo and Sompo Japan Nipponkoa returned to the ILS market

A Texas Windstorm Insurance Association committee has proposed that the organisation maintain its reinsurance cover at $2.2bn for 2016, implying a slight reduction in its traditional placement

Luxembourg regulators are introducing stringent diversification requirements for Ucits cat bond funds under their oversight, in a move that could skew demand for non-US bonds

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Ecuador on 16 April will produce total insured losses of between $325mn and $850mn, AIR Worldwide said on 21 April

An organised city planner might well look at a road map of the reinsurance sector and weep

ILS investors responded to new cat bonds at both ends of the risk-return spectrum with strong demand in a diverse and record-setting first quarter

Dutch pension fund service provider PGGM has more than EUR3bn ($3.39bn) invested in the ILS sector after recruiting several reinsurer-led managers