Catastrophe bond funds in the UCITS format continued to expand their combined assets under management (AUM) through the first-quarter, surpassing the milestone $20 billion in February before declining slightly to just under $19.8 billion by the end of March 2026.
Driving that has been the record levels of new catastrophe bond issuance, as our market reports demonstrate.
With new cat bond issuance outpacing maturities again in the first-quarter of 2026, it’s no surprise that the UCITS cat bond strategies grew further in the period.
Having started 2026 with a combined just over $19.2 billion in assets under management, the UCITS cat bond funds (of which there are currently 20) grew strongly in January to almost $19.85 billion in AUM, before then growing further in February to end that month with almost $20.09 billion.
That marks the first time the UCITS cat bond fund sector has surpassed $20 billion in assets across the group of fund strategies, a new milestone and one that serves to demonstrate the importance of these funds to the catastrophe bond marketplace.
March saw the group of UCITS cat bond funds shrinking their asset base slightly, to end the first-quarter of 2026 with a combined almost $19.8 billion of assets under management.
Over the course of Q1 2026, the UCITS cat bond fund sector grew by just over 3%, adding roughly $580 million in AUM.
Analyse UCITS catastrophe bond fund assets under management using these charts (data kindly shared by our partner Plenum Investments AG, a specialist insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund manager).
As of the end of Q1 2026, the combined assets under management of the UCITS cat bond fund now stands 3% higher than at the end of 2025, 43% higher than at the end of 2024, 81% higher since the end of 2023 and an impressive almost 126% higher than at the end of 2022.
As of year-end 2025, based on Artemis’ measure for the outstanding cat bond market, the UCITS cat bond funds combined AUM contributed 31% of the market.
By the end of Q1 2026, again based on our outstanding market measure, UCITS cat bond funds as a group still contributed 31% of the overall market asset base.
UCITS cat bond fund assets have now doubled since as recently as May 2023.
As of March 31st 2026, UCITS cat bond fund strategies with over a billion dollars of AUM made up 81% of the overall asset base of these strategies, with six funds now over this level.
UCITS cat bond funds with more than $2 billion of assets now contribute almost 68% of the total.
In the first-quarter of 2026 the fastest growing UCITS cat bond funds were the Leadenhall UCITS ILS Fund which added almost $272 million, the Icosa Cat Bond Fund which added almost $160 million, the Fermat UCITS Cat Bond Fund which added over $125 million, the Securis Catastrophe Bond Fund which added over $88 million and the GAM Swiss Re Cat Bond Fund which added almost $59 million.
In percentage terms the Securis Cat Bond Fund grew the fastest, adding 25% just in the first-quarter of this year. The King Ridge Capital KRC Cat Bond ETF actually grew by more at 253%, but starting from a low base just after its launch of $2 million to just over $7.1 million.
The data underscores the importance of the UCITS fund structure to the catastrophe bond market, with these strategies remaining a key component of the market’s investment firepower.
As we reported yesterday, UCITS cat bond funds delivered an average 1.35% return to investors through the first-quarter of 2026.
Analyse UCITS catastrophe bond fund assets under management using our charts here.
You can also analyse UCITS cat bond fund performance, using the Plenum CAT Bond UCITS Fund Indices.
