Archive for September, 2012

A report published following a three-year study which looked at the reinsurance sector and reinsurance trading over three annual market cycles from 2009-2012, urges reinsurers to maintain their focus on the primary risks they are underwriting and warns against the bundling of risks across multiple territories. The study undertaken by the Insurance Intellectual Capital Initiative […]

The involvement of money from capital market sources, such as hedge funds, in the reinsurance industry, and in what form that capital is deployed, is a topic which has been receiving increasing attention this year. A new company launch could see the next generation of reinsurance-focused hedge fund managers entering the reinsurance space more easily, […]

The average returns of insurance-linked securities funds, as measured by the Eurekahedge ILS Advisers Index, keeps increasing as they put in another record month in August. Insight from ILS Advisers, an investment consultancy based in Hong Kong focusing on ILS as an asset class, shows that on average ILS funds returned 0.95% in August, the record […]

It’s generally assumed that insured losses from natural catastrophes tend to be driven by the regions of the world with the highest insurance uptake and property catastrophe insurance exposure. Hence the long-term trend shows the United States as the dominant source of insured natural catastrophe losses, with more than three-quarters of losses historically coming from […]

The industry loss warranty (ILW) market started 2012 well with relatively strong trading activity as rates remained at 2011 levels driven by the huge catastrophic losses suffered over the course of last year. Despite this good start to the year, the ILW market has suffered in recent months and if there are no major catastrophe […]

Artemis attended the 6th Annual European Insurance-Linked Securities Conference, held by rating agency Standard & Poor’s in London, earlier today to hear what the speakers had to say about the market. One of the panels was particularly timely as it discussed the potential for further development of the longevity risk transfer market and asked the […]

A stormy future lies ahead for U.S. property and casualty re/insurers according to a new report from Ceres, a nonprofit group advocating for sustainability leadership from businesses and investors. The report suggests worsening weather in a warming world poses a growing risk to the financial stability of insurance and reinsurance companies, and this has broad […]

Interesting news for the catastrophe bond market today as a new MultiCat Mexico Ltd. cat bond begins marketing. MultiCat Mexico Ltd. Series 2012-1 will replace the cover afforded by the MultiCat Mexico 2009 cat bond which matures at the end of September. MultiCat Mexico 2012 is being marketed as a $300m deal but there is […]

This telling statistic comes from some research undertaken by PwC which looked at defined benefit pension plan valuations in the UK and what they were doing, or planning to do, to overcome rising deficits. PwC surveyed 98 UK defined benefit pension schemes and found that on average they will likely need an extra three years […]

In the financial markets, the term yield is used to describe the return that investors make or expect to make from their investment in a security. It has a number of different definitions depending on the usage but with an example asset such as insurance-linked securities or catastrophe bonds it can best be thought of […]