Archive for November, 2017

The U.S. insurance market is often described as the most developed in the world, but the impacts of hurricanes in the third-quarter of 2017 highlighted a dangerous protection gap in the region and brings the country’s ‘most developed’ status into question.

Reinsurance giant Munich Re forecasts ongoing price pressure in insurance and reinsurance, leading the firm’s CEO Joachim Wenning to forecast that profits will remain stable, but are unlikely to return to levels seen in prior years.

The approval of the UK’s Risk Transformation Regulations 2017 and the Risk Transformation (Tax) Regulations 2017 yesterday by a Parliamentary Delegated Legislation Committee, will ultimately help to “grow the ILS pie”, according to the Chairman of the London Market Group’s (LMG’s) ILS Taskforce.

Chubb has reported an estimated $320 million of fourth-quarter 2017 catastrophe losses, $280 million of which are due to the impacts of California wildfires, taking its losses for the second-half of the year above $2.2 billion after claims made on its reinsurance, which will have included cessions to its total-return reinsurance joint-venture ABR Re.

Following the devastating impacts of hurricanes Irma and Maria in the Caribbean discussion has once again turned to how to secure an increased amount of parametric disaster risk financing for the region, with a regional catastrophe bond issuance rising up the agenda once again.

A UK government cross-party parliamentary committee has just completed a meeting in which it approved the Risk Transformation Regulations 2017 and the Risk Transformation (Tax) Regulations 2017, which will make up the UK ILS regulatory regime, but not without pertinent questions from those attending.

This afternoon the United Kingdom’s insurance-linked securities (ILS) and risk transformation regulations are to be debated by a cross-party parliamentary committee who will debate the measures and get to give the final approval before the new rules are enacted.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) market responded well to recent intense pressure from third-quarter catastrophe events, and there’s an opportunity for ILS players to take advantage of premium increases of up to 30% or higher, according to insurance and reinsurance linked investment specialist manager, Twelve Capital.

U.S. primary military mutual insurer USAA has opted to extend the maturity of half of the principal of one tranche of its Residential Reinsurance 2013 Ltd. (Series 2013-2) catastrophe bond, electing to hold back $40 million of collateral to allow for loss development from the California wildfires.

Markel CATCo Investment Management Ltd., the collateralized reinsurance and retrocessional investment fund manager, has successfully raised $543 million of new capital from investors for its stock exchange listed retrocession focused CATCo Reinsurance Opportunities Fund.