From the insurance-linked-securities mavens at Artemis, Oct. 31:
Aon’s CEO Greg Case said today that he is hopeful the catastrophe bond his firm worked on for Jamaica will help the country in its recovery after hurricane Melissa. Case also discussed the opportunity to provide risk solutions to the massive hyperscaler data centre build-out, highlighting alternative capital as relevant here as well.
Greg Case’s comments came during Aon’s third-quarter 2025 earnings call today. As we reported earlier, the company highlighted ongoing “significant growth” in its insurance-linked securities (ILS) business line.
Aon Securities was one of the main players that assisted in getting Jamaica’s World Bank facilitated catastrophe bond to market, acting as joint structuring agent, joint bookrunner and also joint manager for the issuance of insurance-linked securities (ILS), alongside Swiss Re Capital Markets.
Highlighting the devastating impacts of the hurricane Jamaica has just faced, Case begin his opening remarks during today’s call by saying, “We want to recognise the great trauma and suffering resulting from Hurricane Melissa.
“We’re thinking about everyone affected by this terrible catastrophe, and we feel very, very humble and hopeful that the work Aon undertook with the World Bank to arrange a cat bond for the government of Jamaica will help accelerate and support recovery.”
As we reported this morning, the calculation agent process for the cat bond is already well-underway and it is hoped a determination on any payout will be made soon.
During Aon’s earnings call today, executives discussed a range of topics of interest to the market’s we cover.
Firstly, on reinsurance market conditions, Edmund Reese, CFO commented, “While July one treaty property renewal rates were softer, this was balanced by higher limits and ongoing strength in international facultative markets, underscoring our platform’s increasing importance in supporting clients as they navigate volatility and match capital to risk.”
Reese later also acknowledged the rising demand and activity in aggregate or frequency reinsurance protections, saying, “Clearly, we’re seeing pressure in the property side of it. The demand is high, clients are buying more sideways coverage to cover perils.”
CEO Case went into more detail on supply and demand factors in reinsurance, explaining, “Think about overall demand and supply. When you think of what’s going on in the world these days, greater and greater risk, there is absolute pressure on a unit price basis particularly on the property side and you’re seeing that really across the board.
“But, think about how we react. We react on a client level, and we’re essentially helping clients understand how to mitigate risk on a much broader scale.
“So this isn’t just traditional treaty and facultative, think about insurance-linked securities. I started off with the obvious tragedy and the catastrophe in Jamaica, and then talked about how we brought capital in to try to do something about that.
“We’re going to do well over, you know, close to 150 or greater cat bonds and parametric instruments for companies in addition to insurers. So this is really the opportunity to bring more capital in to support an environment which is demanding it.”
One theme running throughout the Aon earnings call was the topic of hyperscaler data centres and the significant investments being made to accelerate their construction and build-out.
With hundreds of billions of dollars being spent in building out data centres for artificial intelligence (AI) and other data processing or computing needs, Aon sees bringing its risk capital expertise to bear in solving client problems here as a meaningful opportunity.
Case explained, “I would say we’re just at the start line. Maybe the most powerful message that Edmund and I are highlighting here is the work we’re doing on what’s next, and an engineering driven approach, which really starts fundamentally with how and where you where you build these, and how you start to maintain them. Then asking the question around the analytics on what really is the potential volatility to be covered here and the risk to be covered here.”....
....MUCH MORE
Also at Artemis, November 1:
World Bank says Jamaica catastrophe bond payout “likely” for hurricane Melissa
which notes the bond trigger is parametric rather than actual damage claims, with one of the parameters being central barometric pressure. Payout on the bond is pretty much a lock as the storm's central pressure got as low as 892 millibars, making Melissa the third strongest storm recorded in the Atlantic.
And October 31:
Hurricane Melissa crosses Jamaica cat bond parametric boxes at 892mb, 100% payout likely
