QBE Insurance Group, the Australia headquartered global insurance and reinsurance company, is now aiming to upsize its latest catastrophe bond sponsorship by one-third to secure $400 million of international peak peril reinsurance from the issuance, Artemis understand.As a result, this will become QBE’s largest catastrophe bond sponsorship by $150 million and also its second of this year, demonstrating the firm’s increasing comfort with and appetite for capital markets backed and fully-collateralized reinsurance protection.QBE returned to the cat bond market earlier in December, with an initial target to secure $300 million or more in international peak peril catastrophe reinsurance.Now, the target has been raised to $400 million for this issuance, while the price guidance has been updated to a narrower range within and towards the upper-end of what the notes were initially offered with.

Which means that Bridge Street Re Ltd.is now looking to issue a $400 million tranche of Series 2025-2 Class A notes, that will provide QBE and certain underwriting subsidiaries of the company, indemnity based reinsurance against losses caused by named storms and earthquakes in the U.S., as well as earthquakes in Australia and New Zealand on a per-occurrence and indemnity trigger basis, running across a three-year term, from January 1st 2026.The $400 million of Class A notes Bridge Street Re Ltd.

is set to issue will have an initial expected loss of 3.33% and were first offered to cat bond investors with price guidance in a range from 7.5% to 8%.We’re now told that price guidance has been revised to a new range of 7.75% to 8%, so narrower and towards the top-end of guidance, once again showing investor’s minimum return requirements remain a factor in the market despite recent tightening.QBE was last seen in the catastrophe bond market earlier this year, when it secured $250 million of multi-peril protection from the deal.

So it’s encouraging to see the company looking to significantly increase its cat bond backed reinsurance protection with a second issuance in the same year.You can read all about this new catastrophe bond transaction and every other cat bond ever issued in our Artemis Deal Directory..All of our Artemis Live insurance-linked securities (ILS), catastrophe bonds and reinsurance can be accessed online.

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