"Coronavirus: The World Bank should care that the public does not understand its pandemic bonds"

Although the WHO declaration of "PANDEMIC" was not required for payout you'd think the money would have started flowing right? I mean both of the important triggers tripped, secondary markets have already marked the riskiest tranche down to zip but none of the relatively paltry $320 million has started moving.

As we said during the last Ebola pandemic, these things appear to be designed and structured to not pay out.

Here with some defense is EuroMoney:

There are legitimate criticisms of pandemic bonds, but the lunatic conspiracy theories online amid the coronavirus panic are damaging; the World Bank’s failure to refute them clearly is a mistake.

Pandemic bonds, and their cousins in the broader catastrophe bond sector, are peculiar animals. They are frequently complex, somewhat opaque, and they must wade through the mire of morbid possibility.

But at heart they are insurance. Like most insurance policies, they involve an assessment of the risk of unpleasant events. The relief they provide is determined by strict conditions. Fail to meet those and there is no pay-out.

The coronavirus Covid-19 outbreak racing around the world has raised the profile of the pandemic bonds that the World Bank issued in 2017. They have not yet been triggered, neither by Ebola outbreaks since 2017 nor by the coronavirus crisis of 2020.

For coronavirus this is for the simple reason that the bonds are only even considered for pay-out once an epidemic has run for 12 weeks. And at that point it must meet certain other criteria, such as the number of deaths, the number of cases, the geographic spread and the extent to which the epidemic is still growing in severity.

These criteria, of course, are complex. The terms describing them are buried in impenetrable documents such as the pandemic bond prospectus and the operations manual for the World Bank’s scheme. 

Such documents have unsurprisingly escaped the attention of the hordes of voices online that have latched onto the bonds’ existence and are now, just as unsurprisingly, outraged at the fact that the bonds have not yet been triggered. 

No matter that the World Bank and its associated institutions have pledged $12 billion to help fight the disease and that the pandemic bond is a mere $325 million. No, the crazed denizens of Twitter have declared the World Bank’s bond a conspiracy to enrich evil investors who are betting – betting! – with the lives of innocent people....

....MUCH MORE

If interested here's the Artemis Deal Directory page or the wee beasties:  
IBRD CAR 111-112 – World Bank pandemic catastrophe bond – At a glance: