AXIS Capital, the global specialty insurance and reinsurance underwriter, has now upsized its target for its latest catastrophe bond, increasing it to now seek $200 million in North American named storm and earthquake protection from the issuance, Artemis has learned.At the same time as increasing the target size from the initial $150 million to now $200 million, we understand that the price guidance for the Northshore Re II 2025-1 cat bond notes has fallen to the bottom end of the initial range.AXIS Capital returned to the catastrophe bond market for what will become its seventh issuance to-date, all of which have been under the Northshore Re branding..

Initially, AXIS Capital was seeking $150 million or more in retrocessional reinsurance from this Northshore Re II 2025-1 catastrophe bond, with the coverage set to protect the firm’s underwriting subsidiaries, including its AXIS Insurance arm, reinsurer AXIS Re, as well as its E&S company and Lloyd’s syndicates.This cat bond will provide AXIS and subsidiaries with multi-year and fully-collateralized protection against losses from US named storms (inc.Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands), as well as U.S.

& Canada earthquake risks, across a three year term to April 7th 2028, on a weighted industry-loss trigger and per-occurrence basis.Now, we’re told the target size has been raised to $200 million, as AXIS looks to upsize on the cat bond protection it had in place from its that matures around the middle of this year, although that soon-to-mature cat bond deal was an annual aggregate transaction in coverage terms.The now $200 million in Series 2025-1 Class A notes that are being offered by Northshore Re II come with an initial expected loss of 2.1%.

The notes were first offered to cat bond funds and investors with price guidance in a range from 5% to 5.75%, but we’re now told that the guidance has been fixed at the low-end of that range, at 5%.It’s good to see AXIS looking to capitalise on catastrophe bond market conditions to lock-in more protection than originally targeted at what looks set to be attractive pricing for the retrocessional reinsurance coverage.You can read all about this catastrophe bond from AXIS Capital and every other cat bond deal ever issued in the extensive Artemis Deal Directory..

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