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The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association (NCIUA) latest catastrophe bond has now upsized by 150%, with the Cape Lookout Re Ltd. (Series 2021-1) transaction set to provide it $250 million of reinsurance from the capital markets. At the same time, the spread on the cat bond notes dropped considerably thanks to ILS investor appetite, with the pricing eventually fixed at the bottom of reduced guidance, indicating a roughly 13% decline in pricing during marketing.

USAA is looking to issue at least $375 million of Residential Reinsurance 2022 Limited (Series 2022-1) four-tranche four-year CAT bonds. It will provide four-years of coverage on an aggregate indemnity basis, against losses from multiple US perils. Initial plans were for a five-tranche deal with one tranche, now dropped, providing a year of annual aggregate and indemnity trigger based coverage.

New York-headquartered TransRe has become the latest to see its prices rise above initial guidance, with all three tranches of its Bowline Re Ltd. (Series 2022-1) deal having their coupons elevated while being marketed to investors. TransRe is looking to issue at least $175 million three-year CAT bonds covering US perils on a per-occurrence basis and Japanese earthquakes on an annual aggregate basis, on an industry loss trigger basis.

The United States Treasury continues to explore its options for terrorism risk sharing with private markets, with terrorism catastrophe bonds once again under discussion at committee level.

US-based primary insurer Allstate has upsized the issuance target for its Sanders Re III Ltd. (Series 2023-1) from $225 million to $250 million, but there are now only two four-year interest-paying tranches. Allstate was also looking to issue a one-year zero-coupon tranche. They will cover US named storms, earthquakes, severe weather events, wildfires, volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts, all on an indemnity trigger basis.

Insurtech start-up B3i has launched its first product on R3's Corda platform, v1.0 of its Property Catastrophe Excess of Loss Reinsurance product. The new Cat XoL product will allowing insurers, brokers and reinsurers to "interact, negotiate and place risk more securely and efficiently."

So as a dystopian cat-and-mouse game emerges in Hong Kong, with a technologically sophisticated police chasing protesters for their faces, a refusal to use centralized digital cash, and arrests of protesters for their participations in virtual forums and state-mounted attacks on communications apps -- cryptocurrency has quite a role to play in what may be the opening act of the dystopian, cyberpunk protests of the future.

In February, a 10-second video clip known as "Crossroads" by the digital artist Beeple sold at auction for $6.6 million. An animated image of a flying cat leaving a rainbow trail went for almost $600,000 that same month. A video of a LeBron James dunk sold for a mere $200,000. What do all these have in common? Each is an example of a non-fungible token, and the boom in digital art they have set off. So what is a non-fungible token?

"El Salvador is going to issue a $1 billion bond, with the help of Blockstream and iFinex. And Bukele's going to build a special economic zone charter city running on Bitcoin. This bond has long been part of the plan for Bitcoin in El Salvador - though it's also Bukele throwing dead cats on the table as a distraction. Or perhaps dead goats, given the Chivo network's failure so far."

"The aim of this study is to disentangle the effects of introducing an interest-bearing central bank digital currency (CBDC) for financial stability using a Diamond and Dybvig (1983) model in which (i) both CBDC and private bank deposits can be used in exchange and (ii) liquidity is created endogenously. Agents have direct access to a CBDC, which is a claim on the central bank. They use both sight deposits and CBDC to buy goods and commercial banks borrow reserves to cover liquidity needs. The introduction of an interest-bearing CBDC has direct implications for the sight deposit rate and the loan rate of banks. Besides, if the central bank aims to have a positive net worth and the absence of bank runs, a high demand for a CBDC is a necessary condition to achieve both objectives. If this is not the case, financial stability will be endangered." https://ddd.uab.cat/record/258890/

The 1859 "Carrington Event" produced so much geomagnetic activity that sparks flew from telegraph equipment. If it happened today, it could debilitate power in urban centers, cut off GPS, and put satellite communications at risk.

Bangladesh could benefit from the use of insurance and reinsurance structures including catastrophe bonds as a way to secure much needed capacity enabling it to better respond to natural disasters and climate related risks, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Moody's warns that reliance on retrocession capital is growing but that it considers increased reliance on retrocession to sustain a normal reinsurance underwriting business to be risky and weaken the capital quality of those dependent on it for support.

"After four years of development, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is set to roll out its digital currency project. The launch will reportedly happen on the occasion of the country's 61st Independence Day celebration on Oct. 1."

Cayman Islands-based Oxbridge Re sold $2.4 million of DeltaCat Re tokenized reinsurance securities, representing fractionalized interests in reinsurance contracts written by its Oxbridge Re NS reinsurance sidecar. They are tokenized on the Avalanche blockchain.

"The aim of this study is to disentangle the effects of introducing an interest-bearing central bank digital currency (CBDC) for financial stability using a Diamond and Dybvig (1983) model in which (i) both CBDC and private bank deposits can be used in exchange and (ii) liquidity is created endogenously. Agents have direct access to a CBDC via deposits at the central bank. They use both sight deposits and CBDC deposits to buy goods and commercial banks borrow reserves to cover liquidity needs. The introduction of an interest-bearing CBDC has direct implications on the sight deposits rate and on the loan rate of banks. Besides, if the central bank aims at having a positive net worth and the absence of bank runs, a high supply of a CBDC is a necessary condition to achieve both objectives. If this is not provided, it will endanger financial stability."

"Oxbridge Re Ltd., the Cayman Islands based reinsurance firm with a Gulf Coast risk focus, has begun the initial offering of digital or tokenized reinsurance securities named DeltaCat Re, with the capital set to support collateralized reinsurance contracts underwritten via its sidecar structure, Oxbridge Re NS."

Oxbridge Re Ltd., the Cayman Islands based reinsurance company, through its SurancePlus digital securities subsidiary, completed a private placement of 287,705 Participation Shares represented by the digital tokens, EpsilonCat Re, under a 3-year Participation Share Investment Contract to raise roughly $2.88 million. [Source: Artemis.bm]

Cayman Islands-based Oxbridge Re Ltd. is planning to expand its offering of tokenized reinsurance securities representing fractionalized interests in reinsurance contracts written by its Oxbridge Re NS reinsurance sidecar. This tranche would be on top of the $2.4 million issued in June 2023 through its SurancePlus digital securities subsidiary. Also in July 2024, Oxbridge Re raised $2.88 million for its Epsilon Re sidecar. All use the Avalanche blockchain. [Source: Artemis.bm]

Germany reinsurer Hannover Re has collaborated with Schroders Capital on a pilot tokenization project, designed to enhance the way insurance-linked securities are invested and managed. On an internal-only basis, Schroders successfully enabled reinsurance contracts to be tokenized and traded on a public blockchain platform using smart contracts. This allowed a number of time-consuming processes to be automated. For example, by integrating key catastrophe insurance data sources into the smart contracts payments to appropriate recipients could be automatically triggered if qualifying natural disaster events occurred. [Source: Artemis.bm]