catastrophe bond

Iran allocated 6% of the world's natural disaster fatality, while the country only has one percent of the world's population. More than 40 natural disasters have been recognized globally. According to the evaluations carried out in Iran, at least 31 natural disasters have occurred locally. Domestic insurance capacity does not cover this volume of risk and the need for external reinsurance capacity is always felt. Catastrophe bonds structure as a financial innovative solution allows an issuing institution to transfer catastrophic exposures and risk to capital market’s investors by creating capital relief and additional risk capacity for Iran’s insurance industry. We adjusted formal cat bonds structure with the Islamic jurisprudence, as well as domestic regulations consideration. According to the research and interviews conducted and using thematic analysis research method, we finally suggested that the catastrophe bond instrument in Iran could be issued in the form of "insurance Sukuk" contract template, as a solution for transferring catastrophic risks to the Iranian capital market. Since this proposed structure have many aspects, the comprehensive implementation of it depends on cooperation between money market, capital market and insurance industry.

Out of 64 possible catastrophic events in the whole world, about 34 of them have been experienced in Iran; more than 80% of the regions are exposed to natural disasters risks such as earthquakes exposure. Domestic insurance capacity does not cover this volume of risk and the need for external reinsurance capacity is always felt. Catastrophe bonds structure as a financial & insurance innovative solution (Alternative Risk Transfer Instruments) allows an issuing institution to transfer catastrophic exposures and risk to capital market's investors by creating capital relief and additional risk capacity for our insurance industry. We adjusted the formal cat bonds structure with the Islamic jurisprudence. According to the systematic review research method 8 steps, the Sukuk model was implemented based on the extracted concepts from 23 Farsi articles and 50 English articles. After that interviews by 18 experts who were selected by purposive & Snowball sampling, The Delphi method was used to obtain the opinion of experts and their opinion was modified and implemented in the final model. In the open coding stage, 415 concepts were extracted which were classified into 10 categories and finally presented in 4 Propositions/themes. The trustworthiness and authenticity did base on the four-stage model of Lincoln and Guba and also its complementary step. We finally suggested that the catastrophe bond instrument could be issued in the form of a cat takaful (CT) sukuk contract template, as a solution for transferring catastrophic risks to the Islamic financial market.