Assured Guaranty accounted for a total of $17.31 billion in 820 deals for a 52.1% market share in the first three quarters of 2021, up from the $13.77 billion in 703 deals for a 48.9% market share over the same period as the year before.
“Assured Guaranty continued to lead the municipal bond insurance industry with exceptionally strong production during the first nine months of the year,” said Robert Tucker, senior managing director, Investor Relations and Communications.
Assured guaranteed 61% of insured new-issue par sold, helping to propel bond insurance rate to 8.5% of municipal par issued, significantly above the 7.7% in nine months of 2020.
The $17.9 billion that Assured Guaranty insured in the primary market, which includes two transactions assigned corporate CUSIP numbers, was 19% higher than in the first nine months of 2020, and 88% more than in the first nine months of 2019. It was the highest insured par for the first nine months in a decade, according to Tucker.
Assured also increased the number of new issues it insured during the first nine months of 2021 to 828, up 13% year-over-year.
For the third quarter, bond insurance reached 8.6%, and Assured’s market share totaled 65% of primary-market insured par sold, as it guaranteed 270 transactions for a total of $6.7 billion in insured par, including the guaranty of $150 million of corporate-CUSIP bonds for a healthcare issuer.
“We continued to benefit from institutional investors’ preference for Assured Guaranty’s insurance on larger transactions,” Tucker said.
During the quarter, Assured insured $800 million of bonds for the Miami-Dade County Seaport Department across three issues; together, these issues total Assured’s largest combined transaction for one issuer in a single day in over 10 years.
These were three of the 17 bond issues we insured with $100 million or more in insured par, which brings our total year-to-date count of such deals to 38, one deal shy of our total deal count in this category for full-year 2020, Tucker said.
Tucker said Assured continued to add value on double-A credits during the third quarter, insuring $836 million of par on 27 deals with underlying ratings of AA by S&P and/or Aa by Moody’s, bringing year-to-date production in this category to about $3.1 billion with 83 deals.