SCOR cat bond covers U.S. named storms, earthquake until end of 2019

SCOR SE has sponsored a catastrophe bond whose coverage includes earthquakes in Canada, as well as named storms in the United States.

The Atlas IX Series 2016-1 will give the Paris-based reinsurer “multi-year risk transfer capacity of US$300 million to protect itself against US Named Storm and US and Canada Earthquake events,” SCOR said Jan. 13 in a press release.

The risk period runs until Dec. 31, 2019.

“The loss payments covered by this cat bond are based on annual aggregates with, for each contributive event, the application of an index combining reported market losses with an estimation of SCOR’s market shares at county level,” SCOR added.

The Atlas IX Series 2016-1 replaces the U.S. tranches of Atlas VII Series of US$60 million, which matured Jan. 7.

SCOR “has regularly used capital market solutions for this purpose, with seventeen transactions completed to date including CAT bonds, sidecars, mortality bonds and innovative contingent capital protections,” SCOR stated.

Other recently-issued cat bonds covering earthquake in Canada include Acorn Re Ltd.’s Series 2015-1. That series “provides three years of earthquake protection across California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Arizona in the United States; the province of British Columbia in Canada and the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur and Sonora in Mexico,” Guy Carpenter & Company LLC stated in an earlier report, titled Catastrophe Bond Update: Third Quarter 2015. Acorn Re’s Series 2015-1 was a US$300 million issuance on behalf of Hannover Re and its reinsureds. The bond uses a “refined cat-in-a-box trigger developed by Guy Carpenter’s CAT Risk Studio (CRS),” Guy Carpenter said at the time.