Archive for October, 2008

Standard & Poor’s have announced that they are going to be putting credit stability at the heart of all their rating actions in future. When assigning ratings they will explicitly look at the issuer and security and adjust ratings accordingly if either has a particularly high risk of adverse changes to credit quality. The new […]

Interest in weather risk cover is expanding rapidly among developing nations. It’s seen as a way they can protect against the extremes of weather they tend to suffer and the changes to climate brought on by global warming while also offering some security to farmers and guaranteeing that in times of drought food could be […]

Since Ike slammed Texas the Atlantic storm season has been much quieter. There have been a few named storms but most have either fizzled out over water or been much weaker, I hope you’ve been keeping an eye on things here (updated throughout the season). Hurricane Omar is the 15th named storm of the season […]

The World Bank has announced that it has completed a weather risk contract transaction with Malawi. It’s the first such deal with Malawi and the first time that a member of the International Development Association has been able to access weather risk management instruments through the World Bank. The UK Department of International Development provided […]

Paris Re and Marsh have jointly developed a new index-based weather cover for the wind energy sector. The cover was developed under the framework of a study commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The study looked at the technical, legal and financial feasibility of implementing weather risk […]

In these times of economic turmoil when billions can be lost in a matter of hours on fluctuating and unstable markets, catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities are still performing admirably. The Wall Street Journal has an article on just this topic today which is also great for widening the appeal as it helps reach out […]

Concerning news from Business Insurance that the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund could face it’s own catastrophe in the future if it’s capitalisation isn’t shored up. The current financial and economic climate has caused it’s investors to be bailed out by governments around the world and most likely means the fund will also require a bail […]

At the end of September I posted about the downgrade by Standard & Poor’s of four catastrophe bonds which use Lehman Brothers Special Financing as the total return swap counterparty. Now, it’s A.M. Best’s turn as they have announced a downgrade of three of the the four bonds. Best have downgraded the Class A notes […]

The World Economic Forum, an independent, international organization incorporated as a Swiss not-for-profit foundation who are committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas, have released a report today which provides recommendations to help spur continued growth of the market for insurance-linked securities. […]

Leadenhall Capital Partners, the traded insurance risk operation partnered with Amlin (previously blogged about here), have published some interesting presentations they have made at recent conferences on their website. They are all from the last month or so, and while there is some cross-over between them they are all worth a read. The presentations are […]