City National Rochdale mutual ILW fund sees slight growth to $227.4m

The City National Rochdale Select Strategies Fund, a US mutual insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund focused on investments into industry-loss warranties (ILW’s) and industry-index trigger catastrophe bonds, saw slight growth through the latest quarter of record, ending April 2024 with approximately $227.4 million of net assets.

It now puts the ILW and index-triggered reinsurance investment focused fund strategy up more than 9% in the last year, but still growth has been slow for this particular mutual ILS fund strategy.

It is a unique investment opportunity though, being the only one of the registered mutual ILS investment funds on offer that has a specific focus on index-trigger instruments, from ILW’s to industry-loss cat bonds.

Which comes thanks to its investment advisor being the Neuberger Berman ILS team and its investments being made into their NB Re structure.

The City National Rochdale Select Strategy Fund now has a more than six year track record and in the year to January 31st 2024, the ILW focused fund delivered a 15.58% return to its investors.

At that date, the ILW fund had total net assets of $223.9 million, with its investments into into ILW’s and industry-loss trigger cat bonds totalling $211.9 million of that.

A quarter later, at April 30th 2024, the fund had total net assets of $227.4 million, with its investments valued at $215.56 million.

It’s important to also note the cost of those investments though, to see the potential gains the strategy has been making over time, with this figure now reported at $146.1 million.

It’s also worth noting that the cost of the investments has not changed since January 30th, suggesting no new positions entered into and that the increase in assets is largely appreciation of the investments in the portfolio.

Given the time of year, that is perhaps no surprise, but it will be interesting to see whether the fund was actively deploying capital into new positions through the next three month period from May through July, once that information is reported.

View our chart of industry-loss warranty (ILW) price trends here.