SCOR, the France-headquartered global reinsurance company, is back in the catastrophe bond market initially targeting $75 million of multi-peril fully-collateralized retrocession through sponsorship of an Atlas Capital DAC (Series 2026-1) issuance, Artemis has learned.
SCOR has been accessing the capital markets using catastrophe bonds for retrocession purposes since the year 2000 and you can read about all of them by filtering our Deal Directory by sponsor.
For this Atlas Capital 2026 cat bond, SCOR will once again use its Ireland-based designated activity company named Atlas Capital DAC, now making it four cat bond sponsorships through this structure.
Initially, SCOR is targeting $75 million of multi-year collateralized catastrophe retrocession through this new cat bond sponsorship, with the multi-peril regional focus being the same as its 2025 issuance, being the US, Caribbean, Canada and Europe.
The reinsurer has a $75 million Atlas Capital 2023-1 cat bond that is scheduled to mature in early June that provides similar coverage, although not including the Caribbean. So it will be interesting to see if SCOR opts to upsize its new cat bond, to grow its capital markets backed retrocession in 2026.
Atlas Capital DAC is offering an initially $75 million single tranche of Series 2026-1 Class A catastrophe bonds notes that will be sold to investors and the proceeds used to collateralize a retrocessional reinsurance agreement between the vehicle and SCOR SE, Artemis understands from sources.
This Atlas Capital DAC 2026-1 catastrophe bond is designed to provide SCOR with a roughly three-year source of annual aggregate, weighted industry loss trigger based retro reinsurance protection, running to maturity in early June 2029.
The covered perils and regions for this cat bond will be named storms in the U.S. and Caribbean (inc. DC, Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands), as well as earthquakes in the U.S. (inc. DC, Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands) and Canada, and windstorms in Europe, we are told, the same as the 2025 issuance.
Also like that 2025 cat bond, we understand PCS will be the industry-loss index reporting agent for named storm and earthquake risks, while PERILS will report on European windstorm loss events for the transaction.
There are different index value attachment points for each of the North American and European perils, while event deductibles are also to be enforced in order for a loss event to qualify and aggregate towards the attachment points over the annual aggregate risk periods.
The single currently $75 million tranche of Atlas Capital DAC Series 2026-1 cat bond notes come with an initial attachment probability of 3.44%, an initial base expected loss of 3.13% and they are being offered to cat bond funds and investors with price guidance in a range from 6% to 6.5%, we are told.
For comparison, last year’s $200 million Atlas Capital 2025-1 cat bond notes had an initial expected loss of 3.29% and priced to pay investors a spread of 7.25%.
Price guidance looks commensurately lower this time around, in line with the softer pricing conditions in the catastrophe bond and reinsurance marketplace.
You can read all about this Atlas Capital DAC (Series 2026-1) catastrophe bond from SCOR and every other cat bond transaction in the Artemis Deal Directory.
