Best of Artemis, week ending 11th May 2014

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 11th May 2014, on catastrophe bonds, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics, from the last seven days on Artemis. 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 11th May 2014:

1. AXIS could move into new reinsurance lines with third-party capital
   Bermuda headquartered insurance and reinsurance group AXIS Capital Holdings intends to work with its third-party reinsurance capital investors to bring them reinsurance opportunities which match their risk appetites, even moving outside its typical lines of business.
2. Citi Group highlights insurance securitization as a disruptive innovation
   Last year investment bank Goldman Sachs highlighted alternative capital in reinsurance as a key disruptive theme to watch in business today. This year banking and investments giant Citi Group has highlighted insurance securitization as an important disruptive innovation.
3. Marsh & McLennan CEO Glaser: Brokers feel reinsurance pressure too
   You might be forgiven for thinking that only reinsurance underwriters are coming under pressure, due to the high-competition and high levels of capital in the market today, but actually reinsurance brokers are feeling it too according to MMC CEO Dan Glaser.
4. Hiscox: Reinsurance market ‘continues to overreact to new capital’
   Bermuda-headquartered, London-listed insurance and reinsurance group Hiscox has continued to pull back from its reinsurance underwriting, citing declining rates and blaming the market for overreacting to the entry of new capital.
5. Sanders Re 2014-1 becomes Allstate’s largest catastrophe bond at $750m
   Allstate’s latest catastrophe bond transaction Sanders Re Ltd. (Series 2014-1), which is its fourth that we’ve recorded in the Artemis Deal Directory, has become the U.S. primary insurer’s largest cat bond to date as it upsized by 25% to launch at $750m.
6. TWIA board approves catastrophe bond issue for 2014
   The Board of Directors of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association’s (TWIA) has approved the associations plan to issue its first catastrophe bond in 2014 at a meeting held today. This is the furthest TWIA has ever got down the path to sponsoring a cat bond.
7. What if alternative capital was indistinguishable from traditional reinsurance?
   Costas Miranthis, President and CEO of Bermudian reinsurance firm PartnerRe, said that demand for traditional reinsurance capacity is not suffering in the face of increased competition from alternative capital, rather the key impact has been on pricing.
8. Large, globally diverse, reinsurers continue to avoid the worst
   There’s something to be said for being a large, globally diverse, reinsurance firm in the current environment of competition, capital, softening prices and increasing amounts of alternative reinsurance capital from institutional investors and the capital markets.
9. Some investors ‘blinded’ by cat bond & ILS yields: Swiss Re CFO
   Some investors in catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS) have been blinded by the relatively high yields available to them from the asset class, reinsurer Swiss Re’s CFO David Cole told Bloomberg yesterday.
10. RenaissanceRe CEO joins reinsurance price discipline discussion
    Kevin O’Donnell, President and CEO of Bermuda-based reinsurer and third-party capital management specialist RenaissanceRe, said that at a macro level there is evidence of discipline being lost and risk being priced inadequately in the reinsurance market.

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 28 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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Q1 2014 Catastrophe Bond & ILS Market Report – A Record Quarter

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This report reviews the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market at the end of the first-quarter of 2014, looking at the new risk capital issued and the composition of the transactions completed during Q1 2014. Download your copy here.