By the tip of February, the dedicated mutual catastrophe bond fund strategy offered by investment manager Amundi US, the Pioneer Cat Bond Fund, had grown its assets under management to realize $218 million, while delivering its investors an almost 15.9% one-year return.

The cat bond fund strategy has added greater than 40% to its assets under management throughout the last just multiple month, having reached just over $150 million in assets at its one yr anniversary in late January.

Amundi US launched its first dedicated cat bond mutual fund, the Pioneer CAT Bond Fund, throughout the first-half of 2023.

The investment manager has seen good interest, with assets under the management throughout the fund constructing steadily, offering its clients a complement and alternative to its other insurance-linked securities (ILS) offering, the Pioneer ILS Interval Fund, which allocates to quota share reinsurance arrangements, reinsurance sidecars and private collateralized reinsurance deals.

The Pioneer CAT Bond Fund had reached $84.2 million in assets, as at October thirty first 2023, while delivering an 11.20% net asset value (NAV) return from its launch through to that date.

Then, as we said, the fund had grown by around 75% over the next three months to realize the $150 million in assets by late January, now adding an additional greater than 40% over just multiple month to realize $212 million in cat bond assets under management as of the tip of February 2024.

With cat bond prices rising throughout the secondary market through the start of this yr and robust returns being delivered, the performance of Amundi US’ cat bond fund has also accelerated.

The Pioneer CAT Bond Fund’s Class Y shares had delivered a virtually 15.9% one-year return as of the tip of February, up from the 14.93% rolling one-year return as of late January.

Yr-to-date, for the first two months of 2024, the an identical Y share class has delivered a 3.3% return to investors.

Chin Liu, Director of Insurance-Linked Securities, Director of Fixed Income Solutions, and Portfolio Manager of the Pioneer CAT Bond Fund, had previously said, “A lot of the favorable market trends that we witnessed over the past few years, including more demand from the insurance industry for capital relief and elevated spreads of ILS securities, are still firmly in place.”

The performance of the fund actually demonstrates that, while the expansion in assets under management reflects the strong and growing investor interest in catastrophe bonds.

Amundi US had around $2 billion of ILS assets under management across its dedicated ILS mutual funds and multi-asset class strategies, as of the beginning of this yr.