Best of Artemis, week ending 26th July 2015

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 26th July 2015, 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 26th July 2015:

1. AXIS: PartnerRe deal superior “immediately & in future” to EXOR deal, halts integration work
   AXIS Capital, the insurance and reinsurance company seeking to merge with Bermudian reinsurer PartnerRe in the face of the bid from Italian investment firm EXOR, says the proposed merger is superior “immediately and in the future.” However AXIS has suspended all merger integration work.

2. Participation from “hot money” in ILS has never been lower: Guy Carpenter
   An accusation often leveled at investors in insurance-linked securities (ILS) is that they are “hot money,” in other words capital that is prone to flight and could exit the reinsurance market at any point, due to losses suffered or because there are better returns to be found.

3. Bosphorus 2015-1 parametric Turkish quake cat bond launched for TCIP
   The Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool (TCIP) is returning to the catastrophe bond market for an anticipated second earthquake deal, with another parametric trigger structure under a Bosphorus Ltd. (Series 2015-1) transaction.

4. Reinsurance M&A creates opportunities, but is bigger actually better?
   The potential market gap left by the surge of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the global reinsurance sector presents opportunities for start-ups in Bermuda and other risk transfer domiciles, but some industry experts have questioned if bigger is actually better.

5. ISS tells PartnerRe shareholders not to vote for AXIS merger, plus EXOR’s response
   Institutional Shareholder Services Inc (ISS), an influential proxy advisory firm, has now issued a recommendation on the proposed reinsurance merger of PartnerRe and AXIS Capital and has told shareholders they should vote against it.

6. Capital & data challenge the re/insurance value proposition: Conning
   The insurance and reinsurance value proposition is coming under attack as two factors, more widely available data on risks and abundant capital or risk transfer capacity, combine to erode the industries barriers to entry and disrupt incumbents.

7. RLI Corp sets results tone, citing “significant competitive pressure”
   RLI Corporation, a traditional specialty insurance and reinsurance company, has set the tone as the first to report in the second quarter results season, citing the “significant competitive pressure” in catastrophe exposed business lines.

8. Investors planning to allocate to ILS post-event may be too late
   The impressive growth that the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market has witnessed, amplified by a host of new capital providers, could present challenges for potential investors that aren’t already active in the space.

9. Decrease in new sponsors, pricing floor, slow ILS in 2015: Munich Re
   The market for insurance-linked securities (ILS) and catastrophe bonds lost some of its recent momentum in the first-half of 2015, with a decrease in the number of new cat bond sponsors and the emergence of a pricing floor largely responsible, according to Munich Re.

10. “Constant dialogue” with investors needed to expand ILS: Generali
    In order to help the insurance-linked securities (ILS) and catastrophe bond market to expand in scope, into new perils, risks, geographies and products, a “constant dialogue” with investors is required, according to executives at Assicurazioni Generali.

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 29 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.

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Artemis’ Q2 2015 Catastrophe Bond & ILS Market Report – Keeping up with demand

We’ve now published our Q2 2015 catastrophe bond & ILS market report.

This report reviews the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market at the end of the second-quarter of 2015, looking at the $3.162 billion of new risk capital issued and the composition of the cat bond & ILS transactions completed during Q2 2015.

Download your copy here.