Catastrophe bonds

XL has kept the target size of its Galileo Re cat bond stable at $300mn after anticipated pricing on the high-risk deal fell below initial forecasts, sources told Trading Risk.

Reinsurers face losing entire blocks of business if they do not have hedge fund reinsurer partnerships in place to write risk at lower underwriting return hurdles, Dowling & Partners managing director VJ Dowling has said.

Tokio Solution Management has appointed former AQR Re and Aon captives executive Butch Agnew as vice president of ILS portfolio management.

The top 10 ILS funds have grown their assets under management (AuM) to $44bn - up by 4 percent from six months earlier and 7 percent from January 2015, according to the latest Trading Risk investor survey.

Sidecar returns remained in the mid-to-high teens on an annualised basis in 2015, although softening was still apparent.

The January reinsurance renewals saw diverging outcomes for the US and non-US markets, as Guy Carpenter's global property catastrophe rate-on-line index fell 8.8 percent from a year earlier.

The industry loss warranty (ILW) market witnessed rate reductions of about 5 percent in the January renewals, Guy Carpenter said in a client report obtained by Trading Risk.

The retrocession market registered a significant softening of terms and conditions in the January renewals as specialty lines of business were increasingly covered alongside property catastrophe risk.

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Bermudian fund manager Aeolus is working with advisers as it considers bringing in new investors in early 2016, sources told Trading Risk.

Returns from a group of ILS funds tracked by Trading Risk were down by a third last year on 2014, as rates continued to stabilise in the ILS market.

The $57mn Resilience Re bond, completed on Willis Capital Markets & Advisory's private bond platform in December, was linked to collateralised reinsurance participation on the California Earthquake Authority (CEA) reinsurance programme, sources told Trading Risk.