Best of Artemis, week ending 2nd October 2016

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 2nd October 2016, 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.

Download our new catastrophe bond & ILS market report, reviewing Q3 2016 issuance (published today).

Ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 2nd October 2016:

1. Hurricane Matthew intensifies, targets Jamaica & Cuba as major storm
   Hurricane Matthew has now intensified into a Category 4 storm, with sustained winds of 155mph (as at Saturday) and higher gusts, as it continues its westward track through the Caribbean. A turn to the north will bring a major hurricane Matthew towards Jamaica with Cuba next in the storm’s path.

2. Sompo Japan trials blockchain for catastrophe & weather derivatives
   Japanese and global property & casualty insurance group Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Holdings Inc., is the latest to embrace use of blockchain technology for risk transfer as it trials the technology for catastrophe and weather linked derivative transactions.

3. Catastrophic norms of the future are in tail risks of today: Mark Carney
   The insurance and reinsurance industry has organised itself to address existential issues related to climate change risk and the industry has shown “genius” by recognising that catastrophes and weather disasters could become increasingly severe in the future, according to Mark Carney.

4. Why ILS managers are staying firm on rates: Michael Stahel, LGT
   Michael Stahel, Partner and Portfolio Manager at LGT ILS Partners describes how tearing down the wall between the reinsurance and capital markets has fundamentally altered the reinsurance cycle.

5. Too early to say hedge fund reinsurance model is a failure: A.M. Best
   Adverse economic conditions and reinsurance market turmoil has challenged industry participants throughout 2015 and into 2016, with hedge fund reinsurers being no exception, but it’s still too early to call this approach a failure, according to A.M. Best.

6. Alternative capital “an innovative force within insurance” – Aon
   While alternative capital has tested the marketplace, fundamentally changing the risk transfer business and been said to have disrupted the risk-to-capital value-chain in recent times, Aon says it’s important to remember that it’s provided an innovative force within insurance.

7. Reserves suggest reinsurance cycle is at an inflection point: JLT Re
   It’s likely that the insurance and reinsurance industry will find itself in “danger of releasing reserves” despite the suggestion that accident year redundancies are running low, suggesting the cycle has reached an inflection point, according to reinsurance broker JLT Re.

8. The price game is over: Luca Albertini, Leadenhall Capital Partners
   There was no talk of further reinsurance rate reductions at the Rendez-Vous de Septembre in Monte Carlo, according to Luca Albertini, Chief Executive of Leadenhall Capital Partners. Instead, the focus was on the quality of reinsurance panels, building sustainable relationships and expanding opportunities.

9. The first downturn when reinsurers still make cost-of-capital: J.P. Morgan
   Despite the fact that reinsurance prices have been softening consistently over recent years and are forecast to continue to do so, albeit at declining rates of decline, the big four European reinsurers could still cover their costs-of-capital, according to analysts at J.P. Morgan.

10. CEA policy uptake rises, more risk transfer will be required: Pomeroy
    The California Earthquake Association (CEA), the non-profit provider of over 76% of residential earthquake insurance policies in California, has reported a significant increase in policy uptake in 2016, which the CEO told Artemis will mean more risk transfer will likely be required.

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 27 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’ Q3 2016 Catastrophe Bond & ILS Market Report – Weather risk returns, private deals, market growth

We’ve now published our Q3 2016 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 2016, looking at the new risk capital issued and the composition of transactions completed during Q2 2016.

Q3 saw $1.087 billion of risk capital issued from eight transactions, making it the third most active Q3 of the last decade in terms of deal volume, and one of the busiest in the market’s history in terms of number of deals. Strong investor appetite for cat bond and ILS investment saw the outstanding market size increase from the $25.174 billion recorded at the end of Q2, to $25.449 billion.

Download your copy here.