By Esteban Duarte | December 7, 2022

The World Bank is looking to restart the issuance of catastrophe bonds to help developing countries improve their preparedness for losses from natural disasters.

The supranational lender has issued close to $2.6 billion of catastrophe bonds since 2014, including a $1.36 billion transaction priced in 2018 to help governments in Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru hedge earthquake-related losses. Nonetheless, it hasn’t priced any transactions since July 2021, in part because institutional investors have allocated less cash to buy new cat bonds because they needed to use it to compensate for a slump in financial markets, said Michael Bennett, head of market solutions and structured finance at the World Bank.

“We have a number of transactions in the works and some in fact have been stalled by market conditions,” Bennett said in an interview.… read more > “World Bank Seeks to Restart Cat Bond Issuance to Boost Emerging Nations’ Resilience”