A few weeks ago in January we wrote that ratings agency Standard & Poor’s had placed the notes issued by Vitality Re Ltd. and Vitality Re II Ltd. on CreditWatch with positive implications. The two medical benefit ratio insurance-linked securities deals sponsored by Aetna had experienced positive claims trends and S&P wrote that they could be upgraded once the new modelling results were received. As they expected, the modelling results lowered the probability of attachment on the deals and as a result some tranches have been upgraded.
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Hedge fund backed Bermuda reinsurer Third Point Reinsurance Company have published a press release announcing further operational milestones as the start-up company gets down to business. Third Point Re was launched with the backing of New York based hedge fund Third Point LLC and raised over $750m of capital ($785m apparently) which they’re now putting to work. They announced some senior hires recently and have now added to them with more core team members.
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Almost everyone we speak to is bullish about the prospects for the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities market over the year ahead. Most people predict an issuance volume of at least equal to 2011, but some are predicting much higher. One of those people predicting a year of growth is Christophe Fritsch, head of insurance-linked securities at Axa Investment Managers, who in an interview with Bloomberg said he felt that cat bond issuance volume could grow by 30% to hit $6 billion in 2012.
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A couple of weeks ago we wrote about renewable energy risk analysis firm 3TIER® who published a wind performance map for the U.S. in 2011 which showed that generally wind speeds across the U.S. were above average across the year. Now 3Tier have published a wind performance map for Europe and again it shows that there was a general departure from the norm in average wind speeds across the continent.
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Natural Hazard Catastrophe Reports from EQECAT

