Archive for January, 2009

Interesting news from Arch Capital in their 2008 fourth quarter financial results that they have doubled their estimate of losses incurred from hurricane Ike. They say this is due to increased industry loss estimates of $18b to $21b as well as from additional information received from clients about actual losses. Seeing loss estimates doubling in […]

More details have come to light today about the (nearly closed) Atlas Reinsurance V catastrophe bond deal (our previous post on the deal here) from French reinsurer Scor. The deal will run for 3 years, be valued at $200m and be structured in three series. It will cover Scor against certain U.S. hurricane and earthquake […]

Initial loss estimates from windstorm Klaus which struck Europe at the weekend (France and Spain specifically) have been released by two risk modelling firms. AIR Worldwide and EQECAT have both released their officia figures. The loss estimates are quite different as is usual in these cases, we expect the final losses to sit somewhere in […]

The inevitable appears to be happening. State Farm have announced that they intend to leave the Florida property insurance market within two years. This has been on the cards for some time as State Farm has consistently been battling with insurance regulators over proposed rate hikes which State Farm said they needed in such a […]

Hopefully you will have read our previous post about the damaging windstorm which hit France and Spain at the weekend. Windstorm Klaus tore through these areas causing widespread damage and killing upwards of twenty people. Loss estimates have not yet been released but there is a risk of impact to catastrophe bonds which have exposure […]

It’s often overlooked that there is catastrophe bond exposure in Europe, most of the coverage is related to hurricanes in the U.S. or earthquakes. Only when an event occurs of the magnitude of this past weekends windstorm does it suddenly become a talking point in the insurance-linked securities market. A deadly storm (Klaus) blew in […]

Insurance-linked securities, particularly catastrophe bonds, have had a rough time of late thanks to the economic crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Any positive outlook is a welcome thing in times like these. The Geneva Association are the latest organisation to paint a positive outlook for these capital market instruments in their latest issue […]

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 […]

Hannover Re are to continue to utilise the insurance-linked security market to both issue deals and invest in the products according to an article on Bloomberg today. In an interview with the reinsurers CFO Elke Koenig, the Bloomberg article states that Hannover Re doubled it’s investment in ILS products such as catastrophe bonds last year […]

The Jamaica Gleaner newspaper is carrying a story about the next steps of Jamaica’s search for protection from hurricanes, tropical storms and the resulting flood damage. The story reports that the Inter American Development Bank is planning to spend money on a research project into the regulatory environment to see if it will support introduction […]