Archive for December, 2008

Another year is coming to a close. With 2009 on the horizon it seems like a good time to look back at the top ten most viewed posts on Artemis.bm of the year. Since the relaunch of Artemis.bm in March this year, the website and blog has had over 13,000 unique visitors who between them […]

Despite 2008 being a year of economic upheaval with the credit crunch biting and fluctuations in prices of almost every asset or commodity you can think of, catastrophe bonds have really not fared too badly. If you look at stock markets and commodities, most are down on the start of the year. Let’s take a […]

Earlier this year, billionaire Warren Buffett made a bet with Florida State. He bet that Florida would escape major damage from hurricanes this year and that the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund would end the season unscathed. The bet involved Florida paying Buffett $224m for his commitment to buy $4b worth of bonds to finance recovery […]

Munich Re has released it’s autopsy of the natural disasters to have caused catastrophe losses during 2008. They say total losses were $200B with insured losses hitting $45B. That insured loss figure is around 50% higher than in 2007. Swiss Re recently released the same but with slightly higher figures, showing the disparity between measurement […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency is piloting two new index-based insurance products aimed at the apiculture industry (that’s beekeeping to you and me). The new insurance program uses either a rainfall or vegetation index, depending on the location of the coverage. Whether beekeepers get a payment depends on the amount of rainfall […]

We’ve updated the Events Calendar today to feature the main industry events that we feel will be of interest to the Artemis.bm readership next year. Please do let us know if there’s an event you’re arranging, speaking at or attending which you feel we should feature. We are happy to work with event organisers to […]

Karen Clark & Co., the catastrophe risk consultancy, has published a paper discussing near term hurricane models and how well (or badly) they have performed. They discuss the three big risk modelling companies who launched their near-term hurricane models in 2006 – AIR Worldwide, EQECAT and Risk Management Solutions (RMS). It makes for interesting reading […]

Three of the natural catastrophe bonds which were downgraded due to the collapse of Lehman Brothers have been removed from CreditWatch with negative implications by Standard & Poor’s after interest payments were made as scheduled. Ajax Re, Carillon Ltd and Newton Re were all downgraded and put on CreditWatch as there were fears over the […]

Here’s two interesting pieces of reading on the subject of Hurricane Ike for you all. The first is a review of Hurricane Ike by AIR Worldwide which looks at the impacts of the storm, how well risk models fared in reporting the damage estimates and what needs to be taken into account in future. Read […]

Weather refund promotions backed by weather insurance and derivatives appear to be all the rage at the moment. The latest one to come to light is a promotion from Knar Jewellery called ‘Let it Snow‘. The promotion, being run for their 30th anniversary of business, offers a refund to anyone who bought a product in […]