Archive for July, 2009

Catastrophe bond issuance for 2009 now stands at $1.8b thanks to the latest deal to successfully close, Eurus II. Hannover Re has issued this €150m cat bond to protect itself from European windstorms, covering Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands. Eurus II is a renewal of a 2006 transaction. Eurus II […]

The Parkton Re cat bond issued by Swiss Re America has closed successfully. The deal which started life at $125m was upsized due to demand to $200m demonstrating again the appetite of investors to diversify investment portfolios into the insurance linked securities arena. Parkton Re, though issued by Swiss Re, is designed to provide them […]

Munich Re has published some figures on natural catastrophe losses for the first half of 2009, they make for interesting reading. Insured losses are slightly above average at $11b (the 10 year average being $10b), however the figure for overall economic losses is way down on average at $25b (the 10 year average being $42b). […]

Guy Carpenter have published their 2nd quarter of 2009 catastrophe bond market update on their excellent GCCapitalideas blog. Here’s a brief summary, the link the full report can be found at the bottom of this post. Six cat bonds have been issued in the 2nd quarter of 2009, eight were issued last year leaving us […]

We’ve written pretty extensively about weather refund promotions which are becoming popular as a way to pass on some risk protection to customers and entice them to book their trip with less regard for how the weather might actually turn out. Most of the promotions we’ve covered have been protecting against rainfall, lack of sunshine […]

Eurus II, the catastrophe bond nearing the end of it’s marketing phase, from Hannover Re has proved to be a popular one. It’s been upsized from it’s initial €75m size to €150m. Demand from investors was said to high as those with insurance-linked security portfolios seek to diversify away from the usual U.S. hurricane risk […]

The winners of the annual Environmental Finance awards, which recognise the best transactions and leading individuals in environmental markets, have been announced. In the category of best Catastrophe Risk Deal; Scor has come in tops with it’s Atlas V catastrophe bond deal. It was the first deal post-Lehmans collapse and the award essentially recognises that […]

Institutional investors seem to be increasingly confident about the cat bond market as they start to pour funds back into the asset class. After the blip in the market caused by the failure of Lehman Brothers the market appears to be back in favor as investors realise that the returns and low correlation still make […]

Yesterday Standard & Poor’s took action on six natural catastrophe bonds and lowered their ratings. All the bonds were deals placed during 2007 and 2008. Caelus Re Ltd. from Nationwide Mutual, Carillon Ltd. from Munich Re, East Lane Re Ltd and East Lane Re II Ltd. both from Chubb Group and Residential Re 2008 Ltd. […]

Some are seeing the El Nino that is brewing the pacific ocean as an opportunity to make money on the commodity markets it seems (according to this article in the Telegraph newspaper). The El Nino phenomenon causes fluctuations in weather patterns across the southern hemisphere such as delays to the Indian monsoon and increased dryness […]