Best of Artemis, week ending 26th October 2014

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 26th October 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 26th October 2014:

1. Biggest reinsurance firms, Munich Re & Swiss Re, see tough times ahead
   The two largest reinsurance companies in the world foresee difficult times ahead as reinsurance prices continue to soften, competition continues to rise and pressure from alternative capital and ILS continues, as the key January renewal season approaches.

2. AXA reported to be readying new mortality catastrophe bond
   According to Reuters, French insurance group AXA is marketing a new 144A mortality catastrophe bond transaction, as it seeks to secure capital markets reinsurance protection for large increases in mortality experience under its life insurance portfolio.

3. Reinsurance executives at Baden-Baden discuss changing market
   Executives from the reinsurance industry discussed the changing market and the future impact of recent trends, concluding that the market is facing unavoidable trend but that reinsurance remains a practice in matching risk with the most suitable capital.

4. Capacity alone not a sustainable reinsurance business model: Swiss Re CEO
   Michel Liès, Group CEO of global reinsurance firm Swiss Re, said at an event yesterday that while the current re/insurance market environment provides challenges and opportunities, those reinsurers offering capacity alone could be in trouble.

5. Potential flaw in UK mortality data may impact longevity re/insurers
   A research paper looking at mortality rates in the UK, concludes that there could be errors in the current data provided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and suggests that this could lead to basis risk within longevity hedges, swaps or reinsurance transactions.

6. ACE seeks leadership role in evolving reinsurance market: Greenberg
   Global multi-line property casualty insurance and reinsurance firm ACE Limited wants to be at the forefront, taking a leadership role, as the use of capital evolves in the changing reinsurance marketplace, Chairman and CEO Evan Greenberg said yesterday.

7. Platinum to embrace hedge fund investment strategy this year: CEO
   Bermuda headquartered reinsurance group Platinum Underwriters Holdings is ready to embrace a higher risk, higher return, hedge fund style investment strategy this year according to the firms CEO, as had been suggested earlier this year.

8. Evolving market, changing dynamics may end the traditional cycle: Willis
   The evolving insurance and reinsurance marketplace, with further softening in property and casualty risks expected, and the changing dynamics currently underway may spell the end of traditional market cycles, according to broker Willis Group.

9. Property & casualty to have lower level of cyclicality: Travelers CEO Fishman
   In keeping with a recent theme, Jay Fishman, Chairman and CEO of U.S. primary insurer The Travelers Companies, Inc., said that he expects the property and casualty insurance and reinsurance market will have a meaningfully lower level of cylicality.

10. Everest Re grows Mt. Logan Re sidecar again to approx $480m
    Bermuda headquartered reinsurance company Everest Re has continued to demonstrate that its third-party capital backed, fully-collateralized reinsurance sidecar Mt. Logan Re is core to its business, growing the sidecar again in the last quarter to around $480m.

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 22 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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We’ve now published our Q3 2014 catastrophe bond & ILS market report.

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