Archive for April, 2008

A new report just released by the Milken Institute (an independent economic think tank) discusses the issues affecting the insurance marketplace regarding the difficulty in finding ways to cover disaster prone areas. The report shows that with a little bit of innovative thinking, and some help from capital market innovations, insurance companies could cover catastrophe […]

Interesting article here (from the Providence Journal) which features comments from Shivan Subramaniam, CEO of FM Global, on the issues affecting their business due to the reductions in rates currently being experienced in the market. He says that the reductions in reinsurance rates may prompt FM Global to refrain from issuing a catastrophe bond this […]

The CME Group (provider of the widest range of benchmark futures and options products available on any exchange) and Storm Exchange (the company creating a financial market to help businesses better plan for and manage their weather-related risks) have teamed up and announced the release of the results to a study on corporate weather risk […]

Great news to read that Nephila Capital is extending its partnership with Weatherbill (as announced at RIMS) by agreeing to provide more capacity for the online weather risk service. All cover will continue to be provided via the Nimbus Weather Fund run by Nephila. Seeing such firms working together to provide new areas of capacity […]

The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) are expected in Jamaica today to begin talks with the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) and Jamaican Government on the feasibility launching insurance products for the agricultural sectors of the countries that it provides insurance to for events related to tropical storms and hurricanes. The […]

Weather insurance adoption is increasingly moving into areas where it can make a real difference to poorer developing communities. The latest area to benefit appears to be Malawi where the Opportunity International Bank of Malawi has set up a scheme to protect themselves and also to help farmers reduce the impact from fluctuations in the […]

Weatherbill has published a study identifying the relationship between weather conditions and flight disruptions (both cancellations and delays) in the United States. The study quantifies the impact of temperature and precipitation on major airports and airlines and defines delay times by “minutes per inch of rain” and “minutes per degree of temperature deviation” at each […]

Americot Inc., the second largest cotton seed company in the Southwest region in market share, has an innovative way to help growers of its cotton seeds share their weather risk. Their ‘replant program’ allows any grower with a field planted with an Americot or NexGen cotton variety, that has to be replanted with an Americot […]

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) issued an Investor Alert today warning investors about the risks of speculating on natural disasters with event-linked securities, such as catastrophe bonds or “cat bonds.” Cat bonds offer high yields but can quickly lose most or all of their value if a triggering event, such as a hurricane, earthquake […]

Since I posted on the 9th April about the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility news has been released that an alternative is emerging. In that post I discussed the concerns of locals that the CCRIF was not providing the cover they really needed and that payouts were too low after last years hurricane season. Now […]