ILS Year in Review: The Brookmont Catastrophic Bond ETF

April 2026 marked a significant milestone for us here at Brookmont - the one-year anniversary of launching our Catastrophic Bond ETF (NYSE: ILS). With that in mind, we thought it was a good time to reflect on how we got here, how we set out to bring easier access to this asset class, and why we’re only getting started.

The Brookmont Catastrophic Bond ETF started with a simple idea: to make cat bonds more readily available. Ever since cat bonds emerged in the late 1990s, barriers to entry made it nearly impossible for investors without access to large amounts of capital and sophisticated research tools to easily access this alternative asset that has high returns, low risk, and that can diversify portfolios without adding more exposure to traditional market and economy related risks.

As we’ve entered an unpredictable era of climate change, with natural disasters increasing in intensity and frequency, reinsurance has become an even more important way for insurance companies to manage financial losses after devastating tail risk events. As a result, 2025 was a record year for cat bonds in terms of both deal sizes and issuance.

Now that we have the first quarter of 2026 under our belt, we can see that the massive cat bond growth in 2025 was no fluke. Q1 of 2026 was the most active first quarter in the market’s history, with a record 35 transactions and $6.7B of new capital risk, culminating in a new quarter-end high of nearly $64B issued: a 4% increase over the end of 2025. Zooming further out to the broader insurance-linked securities market, the growth is noticeable outside of just cat bonds, as the total market reached $136B by the end of 2025, growing 10% in Q4 alone.

We believe that bundling a diversified portfolio of cat bonds into a single ETF provides an excellent way for interested investors to gain exposure to this growing market without taking the concentration risk that comes with investing in a single issue. If the past year is any indication, we’re onto something. Following its inception on April 1, 2025 through March 31, 2026, ILS raised over $53 million in assets under management and generate a cumulative return of 7.01%*. Throughout its first year, ILS also maintained quarterly distributions, which began on 9/30/2025, again unlocking investor access to one of the benefits of owning this asset class. According to the 2025 shareholder report, posted 12/31/2025, ILS outperformed key fixed income benchmarks such as the Bloomberg Global Aggregate Total Return Index¹ since its inception.

Throughout its first year of trading, ILS prioritized diversified exposure to global catastrophe risk and largely preserved investor capital during high risk periods, such as the North American Atlantic hurricane season (and even more specifically, Hurricane Melissa, which hit Jamaica in October 2025). ILS continues to invest across a broad range of perils and geographies to avoid single-event losses, leaning into bonds with attractive spreads in the hopes that investors can continue to benefit from elevated coupons.

Investor demand for cat bonds continues to grow, and we believe the ILS ETF is poised to benefit from this trend. At Brookmont, we seek to provide investment opportunities that can deliver our shareholders attractive yields and high risk-adjusted returns. As we move forward in 2026, and our second year of our ILS ETF, please continue to watch this blog and subscribe to our regular email newsletters as we seek to educate investors about the catastrophe bond market and provide ETF specific updates.

Sources:

Brookmont ILS

King Ridge Capital

Artemis

Yahoo Finance

*Fund cumulative performance returns calculated using NAV return data. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns; please visit www.ilsetf.com and view our quarterly factsheet for more information.

The performance data quoted represents past performance. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The investment return and principal value of an investment will fluctuate so that an investor's shares, when sold or redeemed, may be worth more or less than their original cost and current performance may be lower or higher than the performance quoted. For month-end performance and standardized performance, please visit https://ilsetf.com/ils?hsCtaAttrib=189599143027

Material must be preceded or accompanied by the prospectus.

Distributions are not guaranteed.

¹Bloomberg Global Aggregate Total Return Index: A broad benchmark published by Bloomberg that tracks the total return performance of a diversified, global basket of investment-grade fixed income securities, including government bonds, corporate bonds, and securitized debt across multiple currencies. It is widely used as a reference point for global fixed income performance. The index is unmanaged, does not reflect fees or expenses, and is not available for direct investment.