At Artemis’ ILS NYC 2025 conference, Moderated by John Seo, Co-Founder, Managing Director, Fermat Capital Management, the session titled brought together David Ni, Chief Strategy Officer, Enstar Group; Andras Bohm, Head of U.S.Capital Solutions & Advisory, BMS Group; Amy Stern, Chief Executive, Reinsurance, Ledger Investing; and Bob Forness, CEO, MultiStrat Group.the leaders from across the ILS value chain, predicted rapid growth, strong returns, and increasing structural innovation as the market begins to scale meaningfully, with some even going on to suggest that the casualty ILS space could rival or surpass traditional catastrophe bonds.

In his opening remarks, Seo said: “I believe that one day the casualty market would come to parity and then exceed in size the nat cat market as we know it today.“I still believe that, and I believe that the time has come for that to happen.It won’t happen overnight, but I do believe all the conditions are there and that there’s a lot evolution that’s been going on that sets the stage for that.” by asking what long-term returns investors could expect from casualty ILS without “pushing the envelope.” The consensus among the panel was clear: mid-teens to low-20s.

Moving forward, Seo posed the key question: would casualty ILS reach, or possibly even exceed, the scale of natural catastrophe ILS? Tackling the question, Stern said: “I joined Ledger about eight months ago and all Ledger does is casualty ILS.So, I am like all in.I’m a huge believer in what’s about to happen.

I worked in Cat ILS for many years and I’m super excited.I think it’s easily going to be as large and then quickly escalate from there.” Bohm agreed: “The casualty insurance market in itself is huge, and you need to just look outside a bit of casualty.Take a look at what’s happening in the life space and for at least from a broker perspective what we see is that these tools provide something that people need and there’s investors that want to provide it.

And when you see these things happening and you see some growth, yeah, I think it’s not hyperbole from our perspective.” Ni added, “I hand on heart think it will get there, and we have the ingredients in place now for that growth to happen.” Forness pointed to improving infrastructure: “I think we’re seeing a lot of the obstacles to growth in casualty ILS falling away.There’s a lot of participants now, people are coming up with some really great product design.Segmentation in the market means more companies are getting involved.

Investors have a broader appetite.When you look at the relative size of the capital markets to the size of the reinsurance balance sheet you quickly see the potential for scale.” He continued: “Then if you look at the growth in the private credit market we went from conservative investment strategies, to structured product, to private credit.When you start to see these things developing from both sides, the total return that’s available is what’s going to attract more and more people to join on the casualty ILS bandwagon.” While the casualty ILS market remains small, estimated at around $3 billion – $4 billion in capital, its trajectory is steep.

Just over a year ago, the market was closer to $1.5 billion, according to BMS’s Bohm, highlighting how quickly momentum has built.Bohm, who expects this acceleration to continue, was : “I don’t have a crystal ball, but I do believe that it’s going to be a banner year in 2025.And I am happy to make that leap of faith that if the growth is thoughtful, and if the structures are sustainable, and if everybody is on track to really do what they need to do, I don’t see how this growth would not continue to 2026.

But 2025 will be a banner year for this market.” One of the longstanding bottlenecks in casualty ILS, the mismatch in liability duration, is being addressed through structured exit solutions, according to Ni.“If you have a five-to-seven-year duration on your investment, on your asset side, how do you write a 12-year duration liability in a sidecar third party capital vehicle? You can’t do it, so really, I think one of the one of the other ingredients that probably has helped the growth and will hopefully continue to help the growth is finding an exit after your asset duration,” Ni explained.Adding: “So you’re artificially saying, I have five to seven years on the asset side and I’m going to artificially force the liability into that same duration and then I have clarity on the exit.

So, I think for us at Enstar it’s kind of what we do in terms of hindsight underwriting.” As the discussion , Stern highlighted two major forces behind the momentum: the proliferation of managing general agents (MGAs) and a notable shift in insurers’ attitudes toward capital management.“I kind of look at casualty ILS as kind of two major groups.There’s more of the risk-management side where you’ve got MGAs who were looking for capacity and things sit very nicely alongside traditional reinsurance there, and it’s a way for a fronting carrier to diversify its panel to get better terms based on what the risk return profile looks like.” She continued: “There are a lot of cool things that are that are going on there and I think as you see this proliferation of the whole MGA world that I think really helped especially with the acceleration that we’ve seen the last few years.

“Then on what I’ll call more the capital efficient ILS structure, so the really big sidecar deals, I think a lot of it is down to insurance companies and reinsurance companies really starting to change the mindset, and look more and more at capital management and what’s really most efficient.Is it better for me to raise permanent capital, or is it better for me to think about flexible capital?  Something that’s available on a multi-year basis, but has a lot of flexibility in it, and what does that look like and how can I maximise fee income, and how can I really use my skills, but pull that capital out of the capital markets and let them get a really good return and kind of everybody wins.” Stern added: “I think that because those types of structures are happening and as you said, the infrastructure is there, I think we’re going to see more and more of those.” The panel made it clear that casualty ILS is no longer a niche curiosity, but a rapidly maturing market segment with real potential to rival traditional catastrophe bonds.With structural challenges being addressed, investor appetite growing, and innovation accelerating across the value chain, the consensus was that the building blocks for sustained expansion are already in place.

(embedded below), for unique insights into the developing casualty ILS market, what investors need to know about this asset class, and how cedents can benefit from access to efficient capacity from the capital markets.All of our video interviews have a focus on reinsurance, ILS and the efficiency of risk transfer and can be accessed directly from .You can also listen in audio to these interviews by .

Our conferences provide exposure in front of a highly relevant, senior and specialised group of attendees.Plus you’ll benefit from exposure in front of our entire global readership, which averages more than 65,000 individuals every month.For all enquiries regarding for future Artemis events please contact Our conference sponsors for can be seen below.

We thank them all for their valued support: For all enquiries regarding for future Artemis events please contact .All of our Artemis Live insurance-linked securities (ILS), catastrophe bonds and reinsurance can be accessed online.Our can be subscribed to using the typical podcast services providers, including Apple, Google, Spotify and more.