Archive for January, 2011

Pension Insurance Corporation has announced that it has entered into a pension scheme buyout agreement with trustees of the Honda Group UK Pension Scheme to insure the £7m Honda Racing Development portion of the pension scheme. This effectively transfers the liability for the portion of the Honda scheme to Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC).

Ever since the collapse of Lehman Brothers the tangled web of connections made through re/insurance linked deals with the firm have gradually unravelled to expose the massive influence and impact the companies failure had. A number of catastrophe bonds were impacted by Lehman’s collapse but the impact to reinsurers has spread beyond the cat bond […]

After the flurry of catastrophe bond deals which closed during December 2010, January 2011 has seemed a little quiet so far. Now Swiss Re have kicked off the 2011 catastrophe bond market with a new issuance under their Successor X Ltd. Cayman Islands domiciled special purpose vehicle. This will be the fourth issuance under the […]

There has always been a need for the public and private sectors to come together to provide effective disaster and catastrophe risk transfer solutions. The private sector alone, in the form of insurance and reinsurance, cannot provide the capacity to cover all of the risk or effectively help the poorest of people especially in developing […]

Hymans Robertson, the specialist pensions advisory and management firm, has published a report looking at the health of the UK’s FTSE 350 companies pension schemes. The report finds that the aggregate deficit, or shortfall, in these pension schemes has seen a £33 billion improvement. As a result Hymans Robertson suggests that pension schemes focus will […]

Back in December we reported the first UCITS compliant insurance-linked securities investment fund launcha. Now we see (via Hedge Week) that another is launching under the wing of Decision Analytics Advisory Partners AG and their Next Generation Absolute Return business.

Clariden Leu has teamed up with Frankfurt, Germany based Fundmatrix to enable them to reach out to the German investment market with their funds including their insurance-linked securities investment opportunities. Fundmatrix will be helping Clariden Leu gain access to the German market and market its funds to potential investors.

Interesting news this morning from Tranen Capital, a provider of alternative investment opportunities particularly around life settlements, who have issued a press release about their life settlements fund which they say is the first to offer investors protection against longevity risk.

According to an article in the Insurance Times, the UK insurance news source, a report by AA Insurance shows that insurers are increasing their home insurance premiums in order to increase their reserves to protect against growing weather related insurance claims.

Confidence is brimming about the prospects for another healthy year of catastrophe bond issuance. Global reinsurer, Munich Re have issued a press release discussing the prospects for the market over the coming year. They expect the market to achieve total growth in 2011, with a greater volume of catastrophe bonds issued than the volume of […]