SCOR secures 20% upsized $240m of retrocession from Atlas Capital 2025-1 cat bond

Global reinsurance company SCOR has now secured the 20% upsized target for $240 million in fully-collateralized retrocession from its new Atlas Capital DAC (Series 2025-1) catastrophe bond, with the notes now priced 6.5% below the mid-point of initial spread guidance, Artemis has learned.

SCOR returned to the cat bond market in March, with an initial target to secure $200 million of capital markets backed multi-peril and international retrocessional reinsurance protection from this Atlas Capital DAC 2025-1 cat bond.

As we then reported in our first update on this deal, the reinsurer’s appetite had increased and SCOR was said to be targeting between $200 million and $240 million of protection from this Atlas Capital 2025-1 issuance.

Now, we’re told the company has finalised the issuance to provide the upper-end of that range, meaning SCOR will now benefit from $240 million of retro from this Atlas Capital 2025-1 cat bond once it settles.

This will be the nineteenth catastrophe bond sponsored by SCOR to use the Atlas name and the twentieth cat bond from the company since the year 2000, including its Horizon securitization of credit liabilities back in 2001.

The French reinsurance company has been sponsoring catastrophe bonds since the year 2000 and you can read about all of them by filtering our Deal Directory by sponsor.

This now confirmed to be $240 million Atlas Capital DAC 2025-1 catastrophe bond will provide SCOR a roughly three-year source of annual aggregate, weighted industry loss trigger based retro reinsurance protection, running through to the end of May 2028.

The covered perils and regions for this cat bond are named storms in the US and Caribbean (including DC, Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands), as well as earthquakes in the US (including DC, Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands) and Canada, and windstorms in Europe too.

The single $240 million tranche of Series 2025-1 cat bond notes that Atlas Capital DAC will issue come with an initial base expected loss of 3.29%.

The notes were initially offered to cat bond investors with price guidance in a range from 7.5% to 8%, which later fell to an updated range of between 6.75% and 7.5%.

We’re now told that SCOR has successfully priced these notes to pay investors a spread of 7.25%, so below the initial guidance range and around 6.5% lower than the mid-point of the initial range.

With a $240 million Atlas Capital Reinsurance 2022 DAC (Series 2022-1) cat bond sponsored by SCOR scheduled to mature this June, which covered U.S. named storm, US & Canada earthquake, European windstorm, this new issuance will replace a good deal of that retro coverage, while also adding Caribbean named storm cover to the cat bond protection for the reinsurer.

As a reminder, you can read all about this Atlas Capital DAC (Series 2025-1) catastrophe bond from SCOR and every other cat bond transaction in the Artemis Deal Directory.