Bermuda’s insurance regulators have created an advanced catastrophe bond registration process that puts the island light years ahead of the competition.

Cat bond sponsors looking to locate such structures on the island can take advantage of streamlined and much faster licensing and registration, a process that can take just three working days.

This was reported by Artemis.bm, the specialist media platform that concentrates on catastrophe bonds, insurance-linked securities (ILS), alternative reinsurance capital, risk transfer, investments, longevity and weather risk markets.

Artemis said that The Bermuda Monetary Authority has put in place a new faster catastrophe bond issuance vehicle registration process designed to meet the needs of the evolving ILS market.

The report said: “The significant enhancement means those seeking to access insurance and reinsurance capital via the issuance of fully securitized 144A catastrophe bond notes can achieve that even faster than before, with Bermuda’s cat bond SPI registration process now the fastest in the world by quite a margin.

“The process takes weeks in some parts of the world.

“Bermuda was the fastest, having reduced the wait to just two weeks, or less. But the new, three-working-day process will be highly beneficial.”

It further noted: “As sponsors’ use of ILS and the capital markets, for insurance, reinsurance and retrocession, becomes increasingly sophisticated, the need to be able to set up issuers and get transactions out into the market with speed, has become greater.

“Seeking reinsurance capital from a range of sources, sponsors now need to be able to swiftly decide whether they should look to traditional capital, or ILS, fully securitized as catastrophe bonds, or perhaps use another collateralized reinsurance structure.”