Best of Artemis, week ending 21st October 2012

After saying in last Monday’s update that the market was full of rumours that a new catastrophe bond deal would launch, by the end of last week we had three new transactions to report on. Find details on them all in our Deal Directory. As always, you can read every market news story and article on the Artemis news blog, subscribe to our weekly email newsletter update and for your convenience here are the ten most popular news articles from the last seven days on Artemis.

Top ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 21st October 2012:

1. New cat bond Mythen Re 2012-2 first to cover both catastrophe and mortality risks
   This new cat bond, Mythen Re Ltd. (Series 2012-2), marks a new first for the cat bond market as Swiss Re seek to sponsor a cat bond which covers both a catastrophe peril and mortality risk within a single tranche of notes.
2. Climate Corporation pay out on 80% of corn crop weather insurance policies
   The Climate Corporation have provided some insight into just how badly the drought of 2012 has affected farmers in the U.S.
3. Omnibus II vote delay confirms Solvency II implementation delay
   Another key date in the Solvency II process has been delayed, which almost guarantees nothing will be in place until 2015.
4. Are insurance linked securities issuers commodity pools under Dodd-Frank?
   Once again the changing regulatory environment under Dodd-Frank brings some uncertainty to the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market. The latest stems from the Dodd-Frank Act’s expansion of the definition of a ‘commodity pool’ which can now be read to include any entity which operates to trade in swaps.
5. Swiss Re catastrophe bond indices continue to climb
   Recent months have seen investors in catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities make their best returns of the year as secondary market prices have soared thanks to strong demand and a benign hurricane season.
6. Hurricane Paul too weak to threaten MultiCat Mexico 2012 Class C notes
   The recently completed MultiCat Mexico Ltd. (Series 2012-1) catastrophe bond became on-risk on the 15th of October. The risk period began then and in a very unusual occurrence there was a hurricane heading directly for one of the cat bonds parametric trigger zones
7. Atlas Reinsurance VII multi-peril catastrophe bond marketing for SCOR
   The latest Atlas cat bond see’s SCOR revert back to the original naming convention that they began their ILS market ventures with, using an issuing entity named Atlas Reinsurance VII Limited.
8. Queen Street VII Re, the third new catastrophe bond in as many days
   The third cat bond to launch last week was Queen Street VII Re Ltd. and it is Munich Re’s third trip to the catastrophe bond market in 2012
9. Hurricane Isaac losses confirmed too low to impact Pelican Re cat bond
   Finally a statement has come from the Louisiana state property insurer of last resort, Louisiana Citizens, which confirms that their losses from hurricane Isaac insurance claims will not be sufficient to trigger the Pelican Re Ltd. (Series 2012-1) catastrophe bond.
10. Hannover Re to launch Leine Investment insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund
    There’s a new insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund emerging on the scene thanks to a seed investment from German reinsurer Hannover Re.

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If you’re looking for details on catastrophe bond and ILS transactions our Deal Directory has more than 260 listed.

If you want to track hurricanes or tropical storms visit our 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season page.