With catastrophe bond and related ILS issuance set to exceed the record $20 billion figure by the end of 2025, this momentum is expected to persist, as Brad Adderley, Partner at global law firm Appleby suggests that issuance will stay at least at its current size for the time being.Artemis spoke with Adderley ahead of the launch of our  While Q3’25 won’t necessarily be remembered as being a remarkable quarter in its own right, it did help to set a new annual issuance record for the cat bond market of a massive $18.6 billion, with the previous record of $17.7 billion actually beaten in July.When we spoke to Adderley ahead of our he outlined that he wasn’t sure what will stop the momentum that’s being seen across the space, and as the third quarter drew to a close, he echoed the same feeling.“Momentum is certainly going to continue, and I don’t think that next year’s full-year issuance will be significantly less than what this year’s total is going to be.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same,” Adderley said.“As I’ve said before, I think cat bonds have become a natural tool, they’re not a new tool anymore.It’s a natural thing that organisations want to be involved in.” He continued: “I think issuance is going to stay at least at its current size for the time being.

Whether it’s bigger, is a separate question, but I don’t think it’s going to go backwards by $5 billion.I just think it’s such a natural tool now.I’m still equally bullish until someone educates me otherwise.” Additionally, Q3 2025 was a notably busy quarter for privately placed catastrophe bond transactions.

While the bulk of risk capital in the period came from full Rule 144A deals, in terms of the number of transactions, cat bond issuance in the third quarter of 2025 was primarily dominated by privately placed, or cat bond lite deals, with 17 of the 23 transactions brought to market issued privately.Reflecting this impressive feat, Adderley said: “I think it’s a driving trend of new players coming into the market.Private cat bonds are normally smaller, because they’re owned by new entrants who are specifically looking at new risks.

“I think the momentum that’s being seen is a testing ground to what’s going on in the market, and this quarter is a prime example of how effective private cat bonds are within the ILS space.” Adderley also discussed the significant momentum that’s been seen within casualty reinsurance sidecars throughout 2025.“There are a number of players in the market that are writing casualty, and this has been evident this year through the number of casualty raised transactions that we’ve seen.“We’ve had deals from Ascot, Enstar, and MultiStrat.

There is a chance that by year end we will see around seven transactions.And I believe that most casualty sidecars are around $400 million plus, if not more.“If all seven of these transactions get finalised, and there may be more because there’s likely other deals that we don’t know about, if they all raise roughly $500 million, that’s $3.5 billion of new capital that will be deployed in the market.” However, Adderley remains cautious as to whether this momentum will continue into 2026.

“It’s important to think about whether the marketplace has the space for more than $3.5 billion in casualty, when casualty itself has its natural complexities.“To me, $3.5 billion seems like a lot of capital to be deployed in a short period.To my assumption, we won’t see momentum continue next year because of the size that it has already reached this year,” Adderley concludes..

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