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Finance & economics
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Not just Los Angeles
不仅是洛杉矶
Catastrophe bonds are failing to cover disaster damage.
巨灾债券未能覆盖灾难损失。
The scenes of devastation in Los Angeles were just the latest in a recent barrage.
洛杉矶的满目疮痍只是近年来一连串灾难事件中的最新一起。
Last year hurricanes in the Atlantic, earthquakes in Japan and flooding in Europe all carried huge financial and human costs.
去年，大西洋的飓风、日本的地震和欧洲的洪水都造成了巨大的财务和人员损失。
Indeed, 2024 is set to be the year with the third-biggest insured losses, adjusted for inflation, in more than four decades.
事实上，经通胀调整后，2024年将成为四十多年来承保损失第三大的年份。
Surely, then, it is a bad time to own catastrophe bonds?
那么现在肯定不是持有巨灾债券的好时机？
These are securities that protect issuers, mostly insurers and governments, from severe losses in the event of a natural disaster by paying out when certain conditions are met.
巨灾债券是保护发行人（主要是保险公司和政府）在发生自然灾害时免受严重损失的证券，当满足某些条件时（购买持有债券的人）支付（利息或部分本金）。
In fact, across the asset class, such bonds returned 20% and 18% in 2023 and 2024, respectively—the strongest two years in recent decades.
事实上，在整个资产类别中，此类债券在2023年和2024年的回报率分别为20%和18%，是近几十年来收益最强劲的两年。
Instead of paying up, bondholders have reaped vast profits.
债券持有人非但没有进行支付，反而获得了巨额利润。
Issuance has boomed and the market has doubled in size over the past ten years. It is now worth $50bn.
在过去十年中，巨灾债券的发行蓬勃发展，市场规模翻了一番。现在的市场价值是500亿美元。
The gulf between the devastation and the rude returns available to bondholders is a stark demonstration of the limits of the asset class.
灾难破坏和债券持有人可获得的微薄回报之间的鸿沟，鲜明地展示了这一资产类别的局限性。
Yet sometimes buyers and sellers of catastrophe bonds are a match made in heaven.
但有时候巨灾债券的买卖双方又是天作之合。
Issuers hope to cover themselves against low-probability outcomes with costs that could overwhelm them.
巨灾债券发行人希望为低概率事件给自己保险，这些事件带来的损失可能是他们无法承受的。
Investors are hungry for assets that do not move in tandem with the rest of their portfolio.
投资者渴望买一些与自己的其他投资产品不同步变动的资产。
This opportunity has become only more attractive since 2022, when bonds and stocks fell together, whacking investors who believed they had diversified by buying both.
自2022年以来，这种机会变得更具吸引力，因为当时债券和股票同时下跌，那些认为自己同时购买了债券和股票、做到了投资多样化的投资者备受打击。
Viewed in such a light, catastrophe bonds are an example of financial markets at their very best.
从这个角度来看，巨灾债券是金融市场处于最佳状态的一个例子。
Part of the reason for the lack of recent payouts is the exacting terms on which bonds are frequently issued.
近两年的巨灾债券支付不足的部分原因是债券发行时的苛刻条款。
After Hurricane Beryl struck Jamaica in July, for example, the country’s GDP shrank by almost 3% in the third quarter of the year, driven by a 14% drop in agricultural output.
例如，在去年7月飓风贝丽尔袭击牙买加后，牙买加的国内生产总值在2024年第三季度萎缩了近3%，因为农业产出下降了14%。
Despite this painful decline in economic activity, a catastrophe bond issued by the Jamaican government and the World Bank did not disburse funds.
尽管经济活动出现了这种令人心痛的下降，但牙买加政府和世界银行发行的巨灾债券并未支付资金。
The bond had so-called parametric triggers—ones based on measurable environmental conditions.
该债券有“参数触发机制”，即基于可衡量的环境条件的触发机制。
In Jamaica’s case, the air pressure measured during the hurricane was a fraction higher than the maximum level allowed for the bond to pay out.
在牙买加的情况中，飓风期间测量到的气压比债券应支付的最高气压水平稍微高了一点（因此债券无法支付）。
When it comes to California’s wildfires, catastrophe bonds face a different and more fundamental challenge.
对于加利福尼亚的野火，巨灾债券面临着一个不同且更根本的挑战。
Since the 1990s, when such bonds first emerged, the market has mainly protected issuers against “peak perils”, or the largest and most damaging events such as earthquakes and hurricanes.
自20世纪90年代此类债券首次出现以来，市场主要保护发行人免受“峰值危险”的影响，即地震和飓风等规模最大、最具破坏性的事件。
However, it is the more common “secondary perils”—a bucket including everything from the current wildfires to hail and thunderstorms—that have expanded to take up a much larger share of total insured losses owing to the impact of climate change.
然而，由于气候变化，更为常见的“次级危险”已经在承保损失的总额中占据了更大的份额，次级危险包括从当前的野火到冰雹、雷暴等的一切灾害。
Some 61% of the catastrophe-bond market still covers only losses from a single major event, according to Artemis, a data firm.
阿尔忒弥斯数据公司称，大约61%的巨灾债券市场仍然只覆盖单一重大事件造成的损失。
The other 39% of bonds in the market disburse funds when costs rise above an annual threshold, meaning that numerous secondary perils can add up to produce a payout.
市场上另外39%的巨灾债券在损失超过年度阈值时才支付资金，这意味着多个次级危险可以累积起来产生赔付。
On top of this, investors are now demanding enormous returns in exchange for protecting issuers against losses from secondary perils.
除此之外，投资者现在要求获得巨额回报，作为保护发行人免受次级危险所造成损失的交换条件。
In the most extreme cases, spreads over the yield on Treasury bonds can be above 20 percentage points.
在最极端的情况下，巨灾债券与国债收益率的利差可能会超过20个百分点。
This uncomfortably large premium reflects differences in how easily catastrophes can be modelled.
这种过高的溢价反映了在对灾难进行建模的难易程度上存在差异。
No natural disaster is predictable, but some are more unpredictable than others.
没有什么自然灾害是可以预测的，但有些自然灾害比其他自然灾害更难以预测。
For instance, a handful of hurricanes typically arrive during a specific season.
例如，少数飓风通常会在特定季节到来。
Forecasters can rely on more than a century of meteorological data, and the technology to forecast the path and size of storms has improved in recent years.
预报员可以依据一个多世纪以来的气象数据，近年来预测风暴路径和规模的技术也有所改进。
By contrast, both insurers and investors find the challenge of modelling wildfires and thunderstorms, which arrive in the thousands and spread in an erratic manner, considerably more difficult.
相反，保险公司和投资者都发现，给野火和雷暴建模要困难得多，这些野火和雷暴数以千计，而且蔓延方式极不稳定。
Many regular buyers of catastrophe bonds now mostly stick to the peak perils.
许多经常买巨灾债券的人现在大多坚持选择峰值危险型债券。
It is hard to fault bondholders for their reluctance to offer reasonably priced protection against new and more unpredictable disasters.
债券持有人不愿意为新的、更不可预测的灾难提供价格合理的保护，这是无可指摘的。
They do not owe the world their money, and in a market that is already capricious, they appear to be reaching a limit.
他们不欠世界什么钱，而在一个已经很反复无常的市场中，他们似乎正达到极限。
As losses from disasters grow ever larger, insurers and governments therefore face enormous losses with little to protect them.
由于灾害造成的损失越来越大，保险公司和政府面临巨大的损失，却几乎没有什么可以保护他们。
In the absence of fresh financial innovation, it is likely to be the taxpayer who ends up on the hook.
在缺乏新的金融创新的情况下，最终可能是纳税人为此买单。
