catastrophe futures

Eurex, one of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges and the largest clearing house in Europe, have announced today that they are to become the first European exchange to offer hurricane futures for trade and clearance. The hurricane wind damage futures will launch on the 29th June 2009 and demonstrate the continuation of Eurex’s aggressive push […]

It’s no surprise to read in Business Insurance that sales of catastrophe derivatives in the run up to the Atlantic storm season are strong, with volumes traded up and prices up to as well. Demand is being helped by the general scarcity of reinsurance and the fact that catastrophe bonds are currently an expensive option. […]

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange recently launched 2nd event Florida and Gulf Coast hurricane option contracts to the trading community. Already, Tradition have announced through a press release that the market is open for business as their U.S. reinsurance division Tradition Re have brokered the first deal on these new 2nd event contracts. The deal, a […]

In an interview with CNBC news Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, said that his company will sell less catastrophe reinsurance this year and aims to keep cash back to protect his business interests. He said the aim is to keep an absolute minimum of $10b in available capital on hand in case of a […]

Chicago, Wednesday January 21st 2009 – The 2009 hurricane season is already underway in the financial marketplace as CME Group announced trading activity on the first day of opening the 2009 contracts. This starts the season nearly five months ahead of the 2008 season. According to CME Group, 3000 Seasonal Maximum Binary Option contracts were […]

2008 was a year of ups and downs for the insurance linked security and catastrophe bond markets, while the weather risk management market did not fare so badly (although it has been quiet on the news front). At the start of 2009, we thought we’d ask some of our friends within these markets to contribute […]

Advent, the Lloyd’s insurer, has updated it’s loss estimate for Hurricane Ike today. It’s original estimate of $15m has been upped to $42m due to the extent of losses being reported by loss adjusters. The increase is primarily from Advents Lloyd’s Syndicate 780 which manages the offshore energy account, it has had an increase in […]

It’s become apparent that reinsurers are going to have to wait until December to get a final loss estimate from the ISO’s Property Claims Services unit. This won’t please those waiting to here whether any instruments such as catastrophe futures, options or bonds have been triggered. The magnitude of losses is becoming clear in reports […]

A very interesting new hurricane risk instrument has come to light today in a press release from Weather Risk Solutions, LLC (WRS). The full press release is available here. HuRLOs are Hurricane Risk Landfall Options, a new derivative product devised by WRS which will begin trading on October 7th using their electronic trading platform and […]

Reinsurers have been announcing the extent of their losses from hurricane Ike for a couple of weeks now, but we still have no official word from the ISO-PCS team as to the total loss incurred from the storm and whether the magic $10b number has been exceeded. $10b is a loss trigger amount for a […]