Credit fund Enosis Capital has locked in an agreement with AXA XL to insure a new $3 bn wave of debt-for-nature transactions, with the first deal expected within six to nine months. The coverage focuses on political risk and related exposures that tend to scare off lenders.
According to Beinsure, insurance sits at the centre of whether these structures scale or stall.
Debt-for-nature deals swap expensive sovereign debt for cheaper financing tied to environmental spending.
Lower borrowing costs free up cash for ecosystems under strain, coral reefs, rainforests, coastal zones. Belize, Barbados, and Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands turned early case studies into proof points.
Momentum faded over the past year. Donald Trump’s return to the White House reshuffled priorities at several institutions tied to climate finance. Deal flow slowed. Countries didn’t lose interest. The plumbing did.
Specialist capital and insurance firms are now filling the gap. That shift has been talked about for years. Now it’s happening.
Ramzi Issa, who co-founded Enosis Capital in late 2024 after structuring debt-for-nature trades at Credit Suisse, said private participation isn’t optional anymore. It’s the only way forward.
Issa said the AXA XL partnership underpins Enosis’s $3 bn pipeline of debt swaps and development-linked transactions planned over the next four years.
He expects the first of more than a dozen deals to close within six to nine months. A second could land before year-end.
Interest runs high though he declined to name countries due to market sensitivity. The first transaction won’t follow a classic debt-swap template.
It will still rely on familiar credit enhancements, including risk insurance, to keep sovereign borrowing costs down. Same tools, tweaked structure.
The tie-up also plugs into a broader collaboration with the Debt For Nature Coalition. Members include Conservation International, the World Wildlife Fund, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Re:wild group.
For AXA XL, the segment looks like growth. Executives Jeff Abramson and Stuart Barrowcliff said the insurer has backed several debt swaps over the past decade.
That includes a late-2024 Bahamas transaction, where AXA XL insured $30 mn of a $300 mn loan.
Abramson said complexity drags these deals out. Paperwork piles up. Politics shift. Markets move on. The goal now is repetition. A cleaner process. Something closer to industrial, not artisanal.
“These deals take time,” Abramson said. The hope, he added, is to make them systematic enough so execution moves faster.
