ILS Asia 2024 – Interest shifts to the investor side, reflecting market opportunity

Yesterday it was a pleasure to welcome representatives of more than 90 organisations to our Artemis ILS Asia 2024 conference in Singapore and while the engagement of attendees from the region was as strong as ever, there has been a notable and positive shift in interest to the investor-side of the equation.

Eight years ago Artemis held its first conference in Singapore, before the country had an insurance-linked securities (ILS) regulatory regime or any transactional ILS activity.

Over the events we’ve held here, we’ve noted a shift in attendance towards increasing numbers of local and regional market participants, especially from the insurance and reinsurance community.

There has also been a steady and positive shift towards local investors as well, but in 2024 this shift has accelerated, with over one-third of the organisations represented at the ILS Asia 2024 conference being investors and allocators.

These attendees came from single family offices, multi-family offices, Singapore based asset managers, investment advisors and regional investment and trading houses.

It’s a clear signal of rising investor awareness of catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS), but also of the global interest in alternative and diversifying asset classes.

While investor interest has certainly risen, it is also clear that our mission to provide a platform for education and networking in the region continues to be the right choice, as many of these investors are very new to insurance-linked securities (ILS), some never having heard of the asset class prior to deciding to attend our conference.

Investor interest could be a lynchpin for Singapore’s ambitions to foster ILS activity for the Asia Pacific region, it’s also very positive for the international ILS community, whose efforts to market their strategies in the area are also increasing again.

For Singapore, attracting local and regional capital to support locally domiciled and regionally focused ILS deals would be a very healthy development for its marketplace.

Throughout yesterday’s event, discussions touched on the cat bond and ILS activity seen in Asia over the last year and the efforts being taken to increase that.

Sessions also highlighted the fact there are still challenges to growing ILS activity in Asia Pacific, wherever it is domiciled and the fact the ILS community would welcome more reinsurance and risk-linked investment opportunities that emerge from the region.

The relative maturity level, when it comes to ILS, of the regional insurance and reinsurance market was also a theme of note.

While in the United States, cedents and sponsors are often now thinking of “ILS first” when it comes to planning their reinsurance arrangements, keynote speaker Paul Schultz, CEO of Aon Securities explained to the audience, there is still a long way to go to encourage this kind of strategic risk transfer approach in Asia Pacific.

Insured exposure values continue to expand across Asia Pacific, but so too do the impacts from natural catastrophes and severe weather, which speaks to the need for more risk transfer and continuing growth of the areas insurance and reinsurance markets.

With engaged regulators and regional re/insurers, international market participants and now a growing contingent of local allocators and investors, the future continues to look bright for ILS in Asia and Pacific.

The market opportunity for the established ILS sector is also clear, with investor awareness and interest expanding internationally and education on the ILS investment opportunity continuing, it bodes well for future flows from the region to enter the asset class as well.

Visiting Singapore is always a positive experience and attendees from near and far were pleased to hear the latest updates on ILS activity and also the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) plans and positioning around ILS, which remains as much of a priority as ever.

We come away buoyed by the visit. It feels almost like the start of Bermuda’s ILS market successes around two decades ago, which we must all remember also took time to develop and grow into the significant force it is today.

Some people like to say we’ve now “converged”, but in Asia this is still a work in progress. Local ILS hubs for local sponsors and investors would represent a true internationalisation of the asset class and the risk transfer it provides.

Asia continues to be very important, both as source of risk and as a regional market. We hope the growing interest from capital providers in the region bodes well for further Asia Pacific ILS developments.

We’ll bring you more specific coverage of the conference, as well as video over the coming weeks.

Artemis’ next conference will be our Artemis London 2024 event on September 3rd. We hope you can join us!

Finally, a big thank you to our engaged attendees, as well as the kind sponsors and all of our expert speakers at ILS Asia 2024. Your support and participation is greatly valued and we believe the efforts put into educating and engaging the region will continue to bear fruit.

Our conference sponsors can be seen below, we thank them all for their valued support: