UBS Hedge Fund Options, a division of UBS Asset Administration centered on managing and advising on a spread of different belongings for shoppers, has revealed that wanting throughout 2025, the group continues to see reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) as one in every of its highest conviction themes in Credit score & Earnings.
A latest commentary launched by the division, revealed that earnings that had been generated from reinsurance and ILS fund methods in December 2024 had been primarily attributable to hold from lengthy investments lessons.
“Reinsurance/ILS methods usually produced optimistic returns in December. Coupon earnings and unfold tightening drove returns for the disaster bond supervisor, whereas premium accrual carry drove returns for the collateralized reinsurance supervisor,” the agency mentioned.
Including: “Collateralized reinsurance pricing was barely decrease than final 12 months however remained traditionally engaging. Disaster bond pricing additionally moderated attributable to materials unfold compression over the previous 12 months, whereas the risk-free fee additionally declined 100 foundation factors over this timeframe.
“However, all-in yields had been engaging in comparison with different carry investments.”
All through This fall’24, inside Credit score/Earnings allocations, the asset supervisor additionally famous that it continued to learn from earnings earned from reinsurance.
And now, wanting forward for 2025, the UBS Hedge Fund Options staff said that it continues to see reinsurance and ILS as one in every of its highest conviction themes in Credit score & Earnings.
“We lately took some earnings within the collateralized reinsurance house, and plan to keep up our publicity from right here as risk-adjusted returns are nonetheless materially above common historic ranges,” the agency added.
Inside its funding mannequin, the UBS Asset Administration hedge fund staff continues to offer reinsurance and ILS investments a 3% of portfolio weighting, which is the same as we saw back in the middle of 2024.
This stays a typical weighting for the ILS asset class, as disaster bonds and ILS often are usually utilised as a diversifying class which institutional traders put a comparatively small proportion of their general belongings into.
Moreover, many traders throughout the ILS house have taken some earnings following two robust years of returns earned in 2023 and 2024, which has in the end allowed them to extract capital whereas nonetheless sustaining allocation sizes and publicity.