Archive for May, 2009

Every so often Standard & Poor’s publishes the latest versions of it’s methodology and assumptions for rating insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bonds. This keeps the market aware of the kind of factors they are looking for to rate a transaction more highly and also allows S&P to factor in new structural factors which come from […]

Babcock International Group, a leading UK based engineering support services company, has enacted a longevity swap to help it hedge the risks of longer life expectancies associated with it’s pension scheme. In doing so it has become the first UK company pension scheme to enter the longevity swap market. Credit Suisse have acted as the […]

The catastrophe bond market is really coming to life this year, and in another demonstration of the resilience of this market under financial market pressures Munich Re is now planning the first deal of this year which covers risks outside of the U.S. Ianus Capital will be a €100m deal which will provide Munich Re […]

Standard & Poor’s have rated the notes of USAA’s planned catastrophe bond, Residential Re 2009. The tranches of the $150m deal, split into three of $50m each, have been rated ‘BB-‘, ‘B-‘ and ‘BB-‘ respectively. Further details of this deal have come to light through the S&P presale report. The deal will cover USAA and […]

Perils AG, the company set up by a group of leading reinsurers to aggregate and distribute European catastrophe loss data (blogged about previously here) has released it’s own estimates for European windstorm Klaus which hit France and Spain in January. They’ve released a figure of €1.55b ($2.12b) which comes in the range issued by the […]

There’s been much confusion in the past few days about the fate of the Ajax Re Ltd. catastrophe bond (sponsored by Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd) after Standard & Poor’s withdrew it’s rating on the notes on May 8th. S&P have now published an explanation. Ajax Re Ltd. had been downgraded previously due to it’s indirect […]

The news coming out of Texas about the TWIA (Texas Windstorm Insurance Association) just keeps getting worse and seems to be a perfect opportunity for the capital markets to step in and provide the cover required. It seems that insurers and then tax payers are going to be the ones who lose out, although no […]

I spotted an interesting press release on the website of GE Energy today which I thought relevant to our readership. It discusses a partnership between GE Energy and WSI Corporation which will offer more accurate forecasting tools to owners and operators of wind farms and their transmission or distribution partners. Technology will be developed to […]

USAA, who specialise in providing insurance to those in the U.S. military and long time sponsor of catastrophe bonds, is returning to the market once again and is currently marketing it’s 13th issuance in the Residential Re series.  Residential Reinsurance Ltd is their Cayman Islands based special purpose vehicle, it issued it’s first cat bond […]

Munich Re have teamed up with Indonesian insurer Asuransi Wahana Tata to bring an innovative micro-insurance product to Indonesia. The product ‘Alert 1 Manggarai Protection Card‘ offers index-based flood insurance cheaply and easily to low income families in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. The new product started life as a feasibility study between Munich Re (as […]