Best of Artemis, week ending 10th February 2013

The last seven days saw some interesting news, with an ILS fund manager backing a syndicate at Lloyd’s, an intriguing reinsurance transaction from Berkshire Hathaway and comments showing re/insurers commitment to the third-party capital space. 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 10th February 2013:

1. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reinsures variable annuity risks, bets against longevity
   Making the news last week was another large and interesting reinsurance transaction involving Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. which sees the firm taking on variable annuity risks and as a result assume some exposure to mortality and longevity risks.
2. Nephila Capital to back $100m Lloyd’s Syndicate 2357, managed by Asta
   Here’s an interesting twist in the world of collateralized and capital market backed reinsurance business as the largest investment manager in the ILS sector Nephila Capital becomes active in the Lloyd’s reinsurance market by backing a new syndicate.
3. Validus expect ILS and third-party capital to play a growing role in reinsurance
   Bermuda based insurance and reinsurance group Validus Holdings announced 2012 full year net income of $408.4m and a fourth-quarter 2012 net loss of $90.7m last Thursday. The group held an earnings call and some interesting comments on the growing third-party and institutional capital management side of its business were discussed.
4. Risk finance, such as reinsurance & catastrophe bonds, key to Asia’s disaster resilience
   A report published last week by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) discusses the need for robust natural disaster risk financing solutions to be employed in the Asia-Pacific region to strengthen its disaster resilience.
5. U.S. flu outbreak hits Aetna but unlikely to trigger Vitality Re deals
   U.S. health insurer Aetna, which has a number of catastrophe bond like medical benefit linked securitizations providing it with reinsurance protection, has been hit hard by the influenza outbreak in the United States this winter.
6. Munich Re’s hurricane Sandy loss shows level of uncertainty around estimates
   One of the defining features of hurricane Sandy has been the difficulty that some have found in understanding their loss experience from the storm.
7. Hedge funds and private equity funds increasingly investing in re/insurance: Appleby
   Global law firm Appleby said in a recent update that it is seeing increasing levels of investment by hedge funds and private equity funds in insurance and reinsurance vehicles.
8. Is the longevity risk securitization market about to take off?
   According to an article published on Dow Jones the market for longevity risk transfer through the issuance of bonds or securitization may be about to come out of hibernation.
9. Catastrophe bond price returns show sluggish gains so far in 2013
   The Swiss Re Cat Bond Performance Indices have been generally sluggish in growth in 2013, particularly the price return index which has slowed to a near halt so far this year.
10. Is it time the capital markets helped out with terrorism risk transfer and reinsurance?
    A cross party group of members of the U.S. Congress have introduced a piece of legislation aimed at achieving the renewal of the U.S. government’s terrorism insurance backstop until the end of 2019. We discuss the potential for the capital markets to assist with the terror insurance backstop.

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This is by no means all of our articles from the last week, just the most popular among our readers. To ensure you always stay up to date with Artemis subscribe to our weekly email newsletter update.

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