U.S. Public Finance

Assured Guaranty is the leading provider of municipal bond insurance in the United States.

Our municipal credit enhancement products include:

• Municipal bond insurance policies covering principal and interest, for both new issues and those already trading in the secondary market
• Surety policies that take the place of cash-funded reserves in municipal bond transactions

We guarantee a wide range of municipal bond types supported either by tax revenues or revenues from essential public projects or services. We insure both tax-exempt and taxable municipal bonds.

Our U.S. insurance subsidiary, Assured Guaranty Inc. (AG) employs disciplined underwriting and risk management standards and is dedicated to the highest level of customer service. In addition to the large municipal bond insurance department in AG’s New York headquarters, we maintain a fully staffed western regional office in San Francisco.

AG was previously named Assured Guaranty Corp., and on August 1, 2024, its affiliate Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp. (AGM) merged with and into AG, with AG as the surviving company. As a result, AGM-insured municipal bonds became guaranteed obligations of AG, a larger combined company, and remain in full force and effect.

2024 Results YTD (as of 9/30/2024)

Strong demand for Assured Guaranty’s bond insurance continued to make us the market leader for the first nine months of 2024, insuring 57% of all primary market insured par sold. During the first nine months of 2024, Assured Guaranty insured $16.6 billion of new issue par, 18% higher than in the same time period last year. This is the second highest primary market par that Assured Guaranty has insured in the last decade during the first three quarters. 

So far this year, Assured Guaranty insured some of the largest transactions that came to the municipal market, demonstrating the continued institutional demand for our guaranty and the increased market liquidity our insurance can provide. During the first nine months, we insured a total of 33 transactions with $100 million or more in insured par. These included $1.1 billion of insurance for the Brightline Florida passenger rail project, where we insured a majority of the senior bonds, $800 million for the New Terminal One at John F. Kennedy Airport, and $831 million for a Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) school district revenue bond issue. Third quarter transactions included $446 million for the Santee Cooper South Carolina Public Service Authority, $361 million for the Central Florida Expressway Authority, and $350 million for the Lower Colorado River Authority in Texas.

Year to date, Assured Guaranty has benefited from greater overall issuance and strong investor demand for our insurance, including from institutional investors on some very large infrastructure transactions. We did a number of deals in the transportation/infrastructure sector the last several quarters, such as major airports, highway systems, bridges and tunnels, and ports, as well as school systems across the U.S. and power agencies, to name a few.

This year, we also had an increase in the use of our insurance among AA credits (defined as those credits rated in the double-A category by S&P and/or Moody’s on an uninsured basis). Year-over-year, we insured 16% more policies and 25% more in par for the first nine-months for a total of 74 policies (20 of which were during the third quarter) and approximately $3.5 billion of insured par.

With municipal issuance being up year-over-year, total primary market par volume utilizing bond insurance was 28% higher in the first nine months of 2024 year-over-year. We continue to provide meaningful financing cost savings for issuers and additional protection for investors in a time of geopolitical uncertainty and increasingly unpredictable environmental conditions.

2023 Full-Year Results

Assured Guaranty specifically, and the bond insurance industry in general, saw increased demand in 2023. The insured market par penetration rose to 8.8% in 2023 from 8.0% in 2022, the highest annual level since 2008.  Assured Guaranty was the main driver of the growth in the bond insurance industry, accounting for over $2.5 billion of the $3.0 billion (or 84%) of the year-over-year new issue par increase. While demand remains strong across our target rating spectrum, the rising growth has been notably observed in the A rated space, where insurance was used on more than 30% of 2023 municipal par sold – up from around 20% in the years prior to 2020 .We believe the growth in recent years reflects both investors’ appreciation of the benefits that bond insurance provides, especially during volatile economic or uncertain market conditions, and issuers’ recognition of its cost-effectiveness and capacity to increase investor demand and market access.

In 2023, we insured 61% of the insured market, representing $19.5 billion of new issue par, the highest in the industry by $7 billion, and 15% higher than last year. We have exceeded $19 billion of primary par in three of the last four years. We believe this heightened demand has proven our product’s value across a wide range of transaction sectors, rating levels and deal sizes.  We wrapped 645 new issues in 2023 with sizes as small as $1.0 million and as large as over $1.0 billion.

Assured Guaranty ended the year with a terrific fourth quarter, insuring $5.4 billion of new issue par, 32% higher than in the same period last year. 

Two statistics help illustrate the value we believe the market assigns to our insurance.  The first is the number of AA transactions we insured, which reflects the positive market perception of our value proposition.  In 2023, we insured 81 AA transactions with a total par of $3.3 billion, 71 of which were insured in the primary market. (Double-A credits are defined as those with underlying ratings in the AA/Aa category by S&P and/or Moody’s.) 

The second is the number of transactions on which we insured $100 million or more, which we believe signals strong institutional demand for our product.  In 2023, we insured 37 such large transactions with a total par of $10.4 billion.  The four largest were $1.1 billion of insurance on Dormitory Authority of the State of New York bonds, $800 million on John F. Kennedy International Airport bonds, $756 million on Houston, Texas Airport System bonds, and $732 million on Power Authority of the State of New York green bonds.  Additionally, we participated in three other such large transactions in Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania that were the winners of The Bond Buyer Deals of the Year award in their respective categories.

Forward-Looking Statements
Any forward-looking statements made on this page reflect Assured Guaranty’s current views with respect to future events and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in these statements. Assured Guaranty’s forward-looking statements, including but not limited to those related to the market for its credit protection products and to the financial health and resilience of the obligors underlying its insured portfolio, could be affected by the development, course and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic and the governmental and private actions taken in response (including governmental responses that could reduce demand for the Company’s credit protection products), and the global consequences of the pandemic and such actions, and other factors identified in Assured Guaranty’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on its website, and other risks and uncertainties that have not been identified at this time. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are made as of October 10, 2024. Assured Guaranty does not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.