UCITS cat bond funds average 12.1% YTD return to Nov 15th

The group of catastrophe bond funds in the UCITS format have already reached a year-to-date return of 12.1% by November 15th, as the Plenum CAT Bond UCITS Fund Indices continues to demonstrate the very attractive returns possible from cat bond investments.

Ever since this UCITS catastrophe bond fund Index was dented by hurricane Milton, a dent that was quickly recovered, the returns of these cat bond strategies has continued to be very attractive for investors.

In the last month, the average return of this Index, that tracks UCITS cat bond fund returns, had reached an impressive 1.48%.

Lower-risk cat bond funds averaged 1.18% for the month, while higher-risk cat bond fund strategies averaged 1.59% for the period.

That has now helped to drive the Index average return for 2024 to-date to above 12%, hitting 12.1% after this Index was priced on November 15th.

Which is historically still very attractive and only trailing the record set in 2023, as you can see in the chart below (click the chart for an interactive version).

At this stage of the year, with just a month and a half of returns to be added and hurricane seasonality petering out, it seems likely this UCITS cat bond fund Index will not beat the record 14.88% annual return set last year, but it should get reasonably close to that level.

Most impressively, the full-year return for 2024 of this UCITS catastrophe bond fund Index is almost guaranteed to be more than double the second-highest seen, which was 6.28% back in 2013.

Which just goes to show how historically attractive catastrophe bond market returns continue to be in 2024.

Year-to-date, the lower-risk group of UCITS cat bond funds averaged an 11.96% return and the higher-risk cohort 12.18%, by November 15th.

Over the last twelve months, to that same date, the average return across all the UCITS cat bond funds as reported by this Index, was 13%, signalling a very healthy 12-month level of performance for the catastrophe bond asset class.

With just over five weeks of the year left to run, as we said it seems unlikely this UCITS catastrophe bond fund Index will beat last year’s record, but it will still record its second-highest level in its fourteen year history.

Analyse UCITS cat bond fund performance, using the Plenum CAT Bond UCITS Fund Indices.

Analyse UCITS catastrophe bond fund assets under management using our charts here.

Analyse catastrophe bond market yields over time using our new chart.