Our latest interview saw us joined by Stephan Ruoff the Deputy Head of insurance-linked securities (ILS) asset manager Schroder Secquaero, a specialist division of global investment group Schroders. 

During our discussion, Stephan explained that it seemed to take the reinsurance and ILS industry longer than expected to begin to understand the exposure it faces from the pandemic, as it is unprecedented in global reach compared to prior experience. 

"Now what we see is a real, real test for the industry," he explained. 

On the question of the liquidity seen in the catastrophe bond market on the back of pandemic driven financial market volatility and whether Schroder Secquaero found specific opportunities there, he explained, "Secondary market trading has indeed offered good opportunities. "We have, usually, a good liquidity position that helped us to trade in a number of instances and helped us also to enhance the portfolios that we run for our investors." 

However, he went on to say that this window of opportunity was not particularly long. 

So ILS fund managers and catastrophe bond investors had to be ready to take advantage of it, which Schroder Secquaero certainly seemed to be.