Download or read book Determinants of the Cat Bond Issuance Spread written by Nico Gysi and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the insurance industry was struck by unprecedented high insurance losses caused by natural catastrophes in the early 1990s, the risk perspective of insurance and reinsurance companies regarding the handling of natural disaster risk has changed completely. The industry's ultimate desire to transfer a share of its risk to the capital markets has led to a continuous convergence of insurance and financial markets over the last two decades and the creation of a new asset class: insurance-linked securities. Catastrophe bonds have developed into the most successful instruments to help insurers and reinsurers to control their exposure to natural disaster risk and provided attractive investment options for investors. This paper provides an overview of the cat bond market's evolution, its current role and growth potential within the reinsurance market as well as a recap of previously conducted cat bond studies. The paper's focus is set on the analysis of the cat bond spread's determinants at the time of issuance. The analysis is based on a data sample of more than 300 cat bond transactions between 1997 and 2010 and was conducted using several multiple regression models, which identified the following factors as the key drivers of the cat bond issuance spread: expected loss, trigger structure, bond rating, peril type and the state of the underwriting cycle. The expected loss has the greatest impact on the spread level, with a spread to expected loss multiple of slightly over two. In contrast to findings of previous studies, indemnity trigger structures do not reward investors with higher premium spreads. Instead, the presence of an indemnity trigger structure decreases the cat bond spread by 62 bps. Ratings affect the spread level as expected. The higher the rating is, the lower is the cat bond spread. With regard to the different perils covered by cat bonds, the findings indicate that the spread level is highly sensitive to the cover.