Yesterday, nearly 250 attendees joined us for our inaugural Insurance Linked Securities Market (ILS) conference in London, enjoying in-depth discussions from our speakers and networking opportunities with industry players. ILS, reinsurance managers and investors.
Attendees came from as far afield as New Zealand, Hawaii, Asia, North and South America, Bermuda, plus a large European contingent, as well as, predictably, many leaders in the London ILS and reinsurance market.
Although we only sold out this week, by the time the event started we already had a waiting list of over 40 more people.
We are therefore delighted with the demand for our first-ever conference in London and look forward to making it a new annual conference in the Artemis ILS market and growing the event next year.
Under the theme of celebrating the catastrophe bond, in the 25th year since the landmark Georgetown Re deal, the agenda also offered attendees in-depth discussions on deeper ILS market conditions, insights and innovation, reinsurance and the global macroeconomic environment, and investor appetite.
We’ll be bringing you a lot more coverage of the event over the coming weeks, with audio and video recordings to share, for now though, as we unpack after the event and absorb its hits, we just wanted to highlight highlights some thoughts from one of our keynote speakers, Michael Millette, Founder and Managing Partner, Hudson Structured Capital Management.
As one of the people responsible for helping to develop the catastrophe bond market during its early emergence as a risk transfer option for insurance and reinsurance coverage, Millette was a fundamental figure in the market. of ILS and shared a thoughtful keynote with the audience, discussing the past, present and future of cat bonds.
“This anniversary celebration is important,” Millette told the assembled audience at Artemis London.
Saying that “innovations in this bond market have contributed to the overall success of catastrophe market expansion for more than two decades.”
He went on to explain that the catastrophe bond has also restored value to the capital market structures from which it emerged.
Adding: “They also contributed to capital markets, you may or may not realize that some of the earliest credit derivative structures were inspired by the nascent catastrophe market.”
Millette continued: “It is important to have this conference now and to commemorate 25 years because the catalytic market, the catalytic bond market and the broader reinsurance market, are all grappling with and reconsidering certain aspects of their structure in the light of the difficult experience of the past five years.
“So this is a good time to take stock.”
He explained the history of the cat bond market and detailed some of the challenges of recent years.
But Millette remains constructive about the future growth of the use of cat bonds and other ILS as risk transfer and investment instruments.
“The sector will be reborn because all parties within the sector need it to grow. The reinsurance industry needs more capacity, insurance buyers need more coverage and investors need more diversification,” he said.
Later in his speech, explaining why ILS capital could become more and more important and he expects further growth in the cat bond market, Millette said: “The world is becoming more and more catastrophic, because Cat risk appears to be drifting to higher levels due to climate change. It will be covered one way or another and the price level will meet this need.
“In some cases, there will be more government support to take advantage, but the 2017-2020 momentum of capital expanding faster than risk is over and we should expect to see prices and conditions pick up now. the challenge of balancing the market.”
While it is time to celebrate the first 25 or so founding years of catastrophe bonds, Millette said the most important thing is to come together to discuss the future and said: “We are here to launch a review to stimulate another quarter century of growth.”
We will publish Millette’s full speech in the coming days, while video and audio podcast versions of each session of the Artemis London 2022 conference will be available in a few weeks.
For now, we would like to thank all of our speakers and sponsors and hope to see even more attendees next year.
Thank you to all of our kind sponsors of the day, details of which you can see below:
Sponsorship opportunities are available for future Artemis conferences, so please contact us to discuss: [email protected].
