Best of Artemis, week ending 12th August 2018

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 12th August 2018, 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 or get our email alerts for every article we publish.

Ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 12th August 2018:

1. Nephila approved for managing agency at Lloyd’s, announces new hires
   Nephila Capital, the largest manager of catastrophe and weather insurance and reinsurance linked investment funds, has had its application to transition to operating its own managing agency at Lloyd’s approved by the market Board and has announced a number of hires.

2. Cat bonds hit $11bn in 2018, market reaches $36bn outstanding
   The volume of new catastrophe bonds and related insurance-linked securities (ILS) transactions tracked by Artemis in 2018 has now reached $11 billion, outpacing 2017’s issuance so far, while at the same time the outstanding market has continued to grow to reach a new high of $36 billion.

3. ILS backing quota shares outpacing sidecar activity
   One of the ways the insurance-linked securities (ILS) and investments market has expanded in recent months is through backing quota share-type arrangements for a range of ceding companies, with this activity now outpacing collateralized reinsurance sidecars and helping to provide capacity to support ILS asset growth.

4. PG&E secures first wildfire indemnity corporate cat bond at $200m
   California focused electrical utility PG&E Corporation (the Pacific Gas and Electric Company) now benefits from $200 million of insurance protection against losses related to wildfires, through the completion of Cal Phoenix Re Ltd. (Series 2018-1), the first catastrophe bond to benefit a corporate sponsor using an indemnity trigger.

5. AIG using reinsurance as performance lever, program expansion likely
   Insurer American International Group (AIG) is likely to continue to acquire increasing amounts of reinsurance protection, as it utilises reinsurance capital as a lever for performance improvements across its book and is already approaching reinsurer markets about new opportunities in the second-half of this year.

6. Mendocino Complex wildfire now the largest in California history
   The 2018 California wildfire season continues to astonish as wildfire acres burned in the so-called Mendocino Complex fires accelerated rapidly over the last 48 hours, making the burn into the largest single wildfire in California state records.

7. More ILW’s to pay out on latest hurricane Irma industry loss increase
   A number of industry-loss warranty (ILW) contracts providing retrocessional reinsurance are set to pay out after the latest updates to third-party data providers estimates of insurance industry losses caused by last year’s hurricane Irma.

8. AXA + XL cede more risk, significantly reduce catastrophe exposure
   AXA and XL Group, who’s M&A deal is scheduled for completion soon, have ceded more risk to reinsurance or retrocession counterparties, as the pair make good on promises to control their combined exposures to natural catastrophe events.

9. Munich Re grows premiums written by 42% at July renewals
   Reinsurance giant Munich Re continues to plough ahead with its growth strategy in the slightly better pricing environment, reporting today that it underwrote 42% more premiums at the July renewal at pricing that was less than 1% better across the portfolio.

10. Primary insurance risk a growth area for ILS: WTW Securities
    As capital market investors increasingly look to access the relatively uncorrelated returns of insurance and reinsurance risk, their appetite is driving market expansion further into primary sources of insurance risk, with insurance now becoming a key area of growth for the ILS market.

This is not every article published on Artemis during the last week, just the most popular, some of which were published over a week ago. There were 24 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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