At our recent insurance-linked securities (ILS) conference for the Asia region, Morton Lane, of consultancy Lane Financial LLC, gave a keynote speech that examined 20 years of cat bond market performance and asked whether investors got what they had expected from it.

Morton Lane's keynote looked at whether the performance of catastrophe bonds was worth the risk assumed and concluded that indeed investors did achieve the returns you would have expected from the advertised risk metrics of the deals offered in the period.

During a Q&A at the end of his keynote, Lane also discussed the need for greater transparency in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, particularly for catastrophe bonds.

“I’m lucky to have access to this data," he said. "I don’t think other people do. I think if they did, they could do better and more analysis, and come to better or more informed conclusions."

"I think if there was more transparency the market would be more innovative because they could look at their experience. And, so, I know that the SEC considers these to be private market deals; they’re 144A deals.

“I think it’s time that the SEC considers this market, which is now maturing fast, to be a public market so that other people can do this sort of analysis and come to these sorts of conclusions."