American International Group (AIG) quadrupled the size of its latest Tradewynd Re cat bond to $400mn from a $100mn target, as its tactic of providing investors with extra disclosure appeared to pay off.
AIG decided in its second issuance this year to provide investors with extra information on the unmodelled risk in the deal and to give the three main modelling agencies exposure data to allow them to remodel the deal for their clients, although it only paid RMS to do so.
The Tradewynd deals portfolio includes complex underlying risk not usually seen on the ILS market, such as offshore energy and marine.
For the sponsor's first Tradewynd bond issued in July this year, modelling agency AIR Worldwide was the only company to receive such data, and the investor community voiced concerns that the RMS Miu remodelling produced very different results from the granular input modelled by AIR.
Typically, modelling firms will provide their clients with a risk assessment of any new cat bond even if they have not been hired to act on the transaction, based on exposure information in the offering documentation.
However, as AIG's chief reinsurance buyer Samir Shah pointed out in a speech at the Trading Risk New York Rendez-Vous earlier this year, this is a less reliable process as it is not based on exact exposure data.
Shah said it would be better for investors to access the viewpoint of all three major agencies through paying for their consultancy services.
It is understood that AIG looked to raise more than $125mn from its first Tradewynd offering, although officially it more than met its $100mn target. The top-up deal therefore represented another shot at filling the highest layers of the insurer's reinsurance programme.
After upsizing to $180mn, the new issuance quickly rose to $400mn as pricing dropped to the lower end of guidance on all three tranches. Notably, the Class 3B layer priced at 7 percent - a multiple of 4.3 times the expected loss of 1.62 percent calculated by RMS. The layer incepts at the same risk level as the original bond, which carried an 8.25 percent coupon and priced at a multiple of 5.4 times the 1.53 percent expected loss calculated by AIR Worldwide.
AIG had $875mn of industry loss cover from its 2010 Lodestone Re cat bonds that matured this year.
The Tradewynd bond had still not closed as Trading Risk went to press.