Best of Artemis, week ending 14th December 2014

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 14th December 2014, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics. To ensure you never miss a thing  subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates.

Top ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 14th December 2014:

1. What happens when the music stops (reserve releases run dry)?
   The non-life reinsurance industry has been running on reserves in recent years. With large catastrophe losses notably absent and prior year reserve releases buoying results by 5% to 8%, perhaps the recent strong performance of reinsurers is a mirage?

2. Some re/insurers rely on investment returns to make a profit: PwC
   In a review of the prospects for the London insurance and reinsurance market in 2015, PwC notes that with margins down on underwriting and an expectation that combined ratios will rise, some re/insurers are “materially reliant on investment returns to make a profit.”

3. Towers Watson gives pensions direct access to longevity reinsurance capacity
   Towers Watson has launched Longevity Direct, a service that aims to give pension schemes direct access to the reinsurance market for longevity risk transfer, giving them a dedicated cell that can be used to write re/insurance for longevity swap transactions.

4. Select group of reinsurers have necessary scale, diversity, strength: Fitch
   Only a select group of reinsurers have the scale, diversity and financial strength to attract the highest quality reinsurance business and protect their market share, in the face of market softening and continued inflows of alternative capital, according to Fitch Ratings.

5. Stone Ridge seeks to grow Interval ILS fund to $1.5 billion
   New York firm Stone Ridge Asset Management, provider of mutual fund strategies in alternative risk exposures including reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS), wants to raise the assets under management of its Interval ILS fund to near $1.5 billion.

6. Reinsurer returns near cost-of-capital, ILS to win more market share: Moody’s
   Reinsurance underwriting returns are expected to near, or even fall below, the sectors cost-of-capital in 2015, according to rating agency Moody’s, while at the same time alternative capital and ILS is expected to win more market share as it asserts cost leadership.

7. Access to deeper pools of capital can add stability to reinsurance
   An interesting debate took place at a seminar held in Bermuda last week, as senior executives from traditional insurance, reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) firms discussed the future of third-party capital in reinsurance.

8. Entropics cat bond fund approved by CSSF, set to open in Sweden
   Entropics Asset Management AB has now had its first ILS fund, the SEF Entropics Cat Bond Fund, approved by the Luxembourg financial supervisory authority, the CSSF, and passported into the Swedish Market allowing it to be officially opened for business.

9. OECD calls for capital markets to embrace longevity risk hedging
   With life expectancies set to continue improving, the OECD yesterday called for the capital markets to offer additional capacity for the hedging of longevity risk, but said that longevity risk instruments need to be standardised to increase transparency and liquidity.

10. Malta completes its Securitisation Cell Company regs, ready for ILS
    Malta, a domicile targeting the insurance-linked securities (ILS), catastrophe bond and reinsurance convergence sector, has now completed its Securitisation Cell Company regulations which bring together the special purpose reinsurer concept with protected cells.

This is by no means every article published on Artemis during the last week, just the most popular, some of which were published over a week ago. There were 22 new articles published in the last week. To ensure you always stay up to date with Artemis and never miss a story subscribe to our weekly email newsletter which is delivered every Wednesday.

If you’re looking for details on catastrophe bond and ILS transactions the Artemis Deal Directory has more than 345 listed. View our Cat Bond and ILS Market Dashboard for up-to-the-minute metrics and charts on this market.

Get listed in our MarketView directory of professionals.

Artemis’ Q3 2014 Catastrophe Bond & ILS Market Report – A lazy summer for ILS

We’ve now published our Q3 2014 catastrophe bond & ILS market report.

This report reviews the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market at the end of the third-quarter of 2014, looking at the new risk capital issued and the composition of the cat bond & ILS transactions completed during Q3 2014.

Download your copy here.