The Shareholder Wealth Effects of Insurance Securitization: Preliminary Evidence from the Catastrophe Bond Market
Journal of Financial Services Research, Forthcoming
37 Pages Posted: 3 Dec 2010 Last revised: 1 Aug 2012
Date Written: March 28, 2012
Abstract
Insurance securitization has long been hailed as an important tool to increase the underwriting capacity for companies exposed to catastrophe-related risks. However, global volumes of insurance securitization have remained surprisingly low to date which raises questions over its benefits. In this paper, we examine changes in the market value of insurance and reinsurance firms which announce their engagement in insurance securitization by issuing catastrophe (Cat) bonds. Consistent with the hitherto underwhelming contribution of Cat bonds to global catastrophe coverage, we do not find evidence that Cat bonds lead to strong wealth gains for shareholders in the issuing firm. More importantly, we report large variations in the distribution of wealth effects in response to the issue announcement. We show that the wealth effects for shareholders in firms which issue Cat bonds appear to be driven by explanations according to which Cat bonds offer cost savings relative to other forms of catastrophe risk management (and less by the potential of Cat bonds to hedge catastrophe risk). Thus, abnormal returns are particularly large for issues by firms which face low levels of loss uncertainty (which reduces the information acquisition costs in financial markets) as well as for issues during periods when prices for catastrophe coverage (including Cat bonds) are low.
Keywords: Insurance securitization, Catastrophe risk, Catastrophe bonds, Performance
JEL Classification: G20, G22, G32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation