Today is the 27th anniversary of the official launch of Artemis, so as usual for our celebratory official-birthday article (which is on the date for once) we wanted to highlight that since beginning to track catastrophe bond and insurance-linked security (ILS) issuance activity we’ve analysed and included nearly $220 billion of transaction volume in our extensive Deal Directory.
At that time, Bermuda did not have much of an ILS industry and did not have catastrophe bond issuers domiciled there. But already at that early stage of the ILS market’s nascency, it was clear Bermuda was likely to play a meaningful role, given the specialist property catastrophe reinsurance focus among underwriters on the island.
While Artemis was created from late 1998 and launched in 1999, the catastrophe bond Deal Directory was actually already in existence, as we began tracking early insurance-linked securities activity from the very first deals.
Having tracked activity in the catastrophe bond market since the market’s inception, the launch of Artemis formalised our attempts at the time to provide a meaningful online home to the nascent insurance-linked securities (ILS) market.
At first, we wanted to provide information and an online-heart to a market where we felt roughly 200 hundred professionals and investors around the globe really mattered at the time.
Fast-forward 27 years, last month we had more than 78,000 visitors to Artemis, while our email newsletters now get sent to an audience of roughly 17,000 professionals. Sign up to get our emails for free here.
We’ve now published more than 23,000 articles about catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance-linked investment trends, the use of alternative reinsurance capital and the capital markets role in re/insurance, weather risk management, parametric risk transfer and more, generally about the use of efficient capital market techniques within insurance risk markets to connect investors more directly to risk-linked returns.
With truly global readership representation, we continue to have the largest cat bond and ILS focused audience on any platform or medium, in every single city in the world and we continue to grow alongside the industry.
At the heart of Artemis remains our long-standing Deal Directory, which in the last year has been used by more than 100,000 individuals, a core of them using it on a very regular basis as they derive transaction insights and analyse market trends that support their work in the reinsurance, investments and insurance-linked securities (ILS) space.
The Artemis Deal Directory was born as a listing of the very earliest catastrophe bonds on a website called the Risk Information & Services Exchange (RSX) back in 1996, then finding its home on Artemis in 1999 when it was decided that the developing catastrophe bond market deserved a dedicated home on the internet.
My gratitude goes to Rowan Douglas, my employer at the time of Artemis’ launch and now a senior and highly influential leader in risk, reinsurance, resilience and climate-related capital circles.
Rowan sparked my interest in this asset class and trusted me back in the mid-90’s to create a home for it, while also encouraging my passion for the convergence of insurance risk and capital markets through his vision for how the re/insurance market would eventually transact (how right he was).
The catastrophe bond and related insurance-linked securities Deal Directory remains central to Artemis and is the most widely used by far of any insurance-linked securities data source available today on any medium.
Since Georgetown Re in late 1996, we’ve now tracked 1,284 individual cat bonds and related ILS transactions in the Artemis Deal Directory.
Cumulatively, the Artemis Deal Directory has now tracked approaching $220 billion in issued and priced 144A catastrophe bonds, private cat bonds and cat bonds covering other lines of insurance or reinsurance business.
That’s over $214.5 billion of successfully settled cat bond and related issuance tracked so far in the chart below, as well as a further around $4 billion in the current cat bond market pipeline plus a number of issuances that never quite made it to settlement.
These resources are a wonderful way to track the ILS market’s development over time, as are the rest of our interactive charts, visualisations and analytics on the catastrophe bond market.
Of course, since our launch we’ve also tracked billions of dollars more in reinsurance sidecars, ILS fund launches and asset manager capital raises, other types of ILS and collateralized reinsurance arrangements, longevity swaps, parametric risk transfer deals and mortgage insurance-linked notes.
27 years since its official launch event, the goal for Artemis hasn’t changed, being one of unbiased, no-nonsense information, education and data provision, as well as convening a space for the cat bond and ILS market to call its own, which now extends to our very popular in-person events as well.
Our conferences are considered second to none, for the quality of their content, the quality of attendees and the experience we work so hard to provide at each event. Join us in London on September 1st for our next ILS market conference.
We also strive to stimulate ideas and innovation, through our focus on exploring why capital efficiency is a critical lever for global insurance and reinsurance markets, and how institutional capital can facilitate that through the use of sophisticated securitisation techniques and intelligent structuring, deriving beneficial diversifying returns for investors and risk / efficiency capital for re/insurers and other sponsoring entities.
The cat bond and ILS sector has cemented its position as a key provider of efficient capacity and as an attractive asset class, while becoming increasingly sophisticated and institutional.
This industry remains fascinating to me and I am still convinced of its potential to evolve into an increasingly liquid and tradable securitised catastrophe (and others) risk market, further cementing its role as a key reinsurance risk capital source, while continuing to its expansion into other classes of insurance business as well, given investor appetite for direct insurance-linked returns is broadening fast.
This industry is a privilege to be involved in. The people working in it are fantastic and I am proud to call many friends. Getting to spend time with such smart, innovative and insightful people is inspiring and watching them evolve this industry from one with just millions of dollars in it, to one that now deploys over a hundred billion dollars every year has been incredible.
We are proud that Artemis has become a valuable input to decision-making for the ILS marketplace and its constituents, while helping to raise awareness of the asset class and educate investors about it.
A personal thank you to all of our readers, contributors, sponsors, advertisers, partners, conference attendees and good friends from within the industry and further afield. A further thank you to the hard-working team here at Artemis and of course also Reinsurance News.
The relationships that have been created over the 27 years Artemis has existed are truly valued by me and the team! Long may they persist.
We look forward to continuing to work closely with the industry, supporting its development and growth, while making new connections and deepening relationships.
Best wishes and I hope you continue to enjoy Artemis!
Steve Evans
Owner & Editor, Artemis.bm.
Remember, we also have the largest reinsurance focused audience in the world. Our sister publication www.reinsurancene.ws is a leading source of news and insight for those in reinsurance and those interested in it, with a readership that at its peak can be more than 350,000 readers in a single month.
As is customary when I reflect on Artemis’ history, here are a few reminders of the evolution of Artemis since its launch in 1999. A special prize, my utmost admiration for your staying power in the industry, to those who remember the very first iteration.
The first image below shows how Artemis looked around its launch on 12th May 1999, taken from an original press release about the launch event.
The fact that the top headline covered the potential for growth in corporate cat bond issuance is particularly interesting, given that is a topic that continues to be discussed today.
This image below shows Artemis in late 2000, around 18 months after its launch. Not much had changed, but deal-flow was accelerating and things were starting to get interesting in the emerging ILS world.
This image below shows how Artemis looked in 2004.
From 2008 to late 2018 Artemis looked similar to the below. During that period of market development and growth, our readership grew from just 1,000 readers per month to more than 50,000, over that decade.
While Artemis has evolved alongside the market, we remain open and accessible to everyone, with a singular goal to drive quality information about the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) asset class to anyone wanting to learn more about it and track the market’s deal flow.
Stay tuned, we look forward to continuing to serve our readers for years to come!
