Best of Artemis, week ending 5th August 2012

Here’s our Monday morning recap of the most read articles during the last seven days. The ILS market continues to function well, with two recent deals upsizing and completing in the last week. Embarcadero Re Ltd. (Series 2012-2) and Vita Capital V Ltd. both provide further evidence of the huge appetite for insurance risk that capital market investors currently have. Here are the ten most popular articles from the last seven days on Artemis.

Top ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 5th August 2012:

1. Investment losses at hedge fund backed reinsurers show correlation risk
   Correlation is a word that often crops up in articles here on Artemis and within the financial services industry as a whole. Correlation can be better understood as an interdependence, mutual relationship or connection between two or more things. In the risk and reinsurance markets we cover, we use the term correlation to describe how tightly linked investments in the insurance and reinsurance linked asset classes are with the wider financial markets and global economic climate.
2. Munich Re reinsures £300m of longevity risk for Pension Insurance Corporation
   Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC), one of the largest insurers of pension plan longevity risks and as a result a firm who assume large amounts of longevity risks themselves, has offloaded £300m of longevity risks by hedging them through a reinsurance agreement with Munich Re.
3. Validus see’s mixed success with sidecars due to hedge fund investment strategies
   Bermuda based reinsurance group Validus Holdings which has a number of sidecar and ventures, has announced its second quarter results and revealed mixed success in their sidecar segment.
4. CEA’s third, and largest, Embarcadero Re catastrophe bond in twelve months completes
   The California Earthquake Authority (CEA) have successfully completed their third catastrophe bond issuance in the last twelve months through the Embarcadero Re Ltd. transformer vehicle, bringing the total cat bond coverage the CEA benefits from to $600m.
5. Eurozone breakup could impact catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities
   Just how uncorrelated catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities are with the wider financial markets is a point worth considering.
6. Vita Capital V takes Swiss Re’s Vita extreme mortality protection to over $2.25 billion
   Reinsurer Swiss Re has released some comments on the completion of their latest extreme mortality securitization, Vita Capital V Ltd.
7. RMS on their innovative approach to modelling the Vita Capital V mortality bond
   Risk modelling firm Risk Management Solutions (RMS) are providing both risk modelling and calculation agent services to the recently completed Vita Capital V Ltd. mortality-linked security transaction which completed this week. RMS have published some details of their innovative approach to modelling mortality risk for this transaction
8. When assessing systemic risk, focus on activities of systemic importance: Geneva Association
   The Geneva Association, a leading international insurance think tank for strategically important insurance and risk management issues, has offered its opinion to the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) on their work to identify globally systemic insurers and insurance activities.
9. On average, insurance-linked securities funds have their best month of 2012 in June
   The unusual pattern of returns in the secondary catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities market has helped ILS funds achieve their best monthly return of 2012 so far.
10. CATCo appoints head of investment operations
    CATCo Investment Management, the Bermuda headquartered specialist investment business who manage around $2 billion of retrocessional reinsurance portfolios for their clients, has announced a new hire.