Archive for June, 2009

For the third year running, Canada’s itravel2000 have launched another Let it Snow weather refund promotion. This promotion has become the largest travel promotion in Canadian history and had thousands of participants in the first two years and despite the fact that claims were made itravel2000 see it as worth repeating. The first year participants […]

Iffco Tokio have announced today that they are expanding the availability of their Barish Bima Yojna insurance product to further districts. The product, designed to protect farmers crops from either deficit or excess rainfall, has been well received and should serve as a model for others seeking to tap emerging markets with micro-insurance products to […]

LeapFrog Investments announced that they have raised $44m for a fund devoted to helping companies start microinsurance schemes in developing areas of the world. It’s the first fund of it’s kind and aims to help businesses bring insurance and financial services products to 25 million low income people in Africa and Asia. With microfinance schemes […]

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 […]

Swiss Re has released further details on it’s recent Calabash Re III Ltd catastrophe bond deal. The $100m deal provides Swiss Reinsurance America Ltd with a source of capacity for a reinsurance agreement which gives it three years of cover. The deal provides Swiss Re America with protection against losses incurred from ceded hurricane and […]

Iffco Tokio, the joint venture between the Indian Farmers Fertilizer Co-operative (IFFCO) and Japanese insurer Tokio Marine and Nichido Fire Group, is planning to launch a satellite based weather index for weather insurance use in India. The scheme is being worked on thanks to the help of a grant from the International Labour Organisation UN […]

We’ve mentioned in the past the potential for catastrophe bonds to be utilised by the banking systems as a way to protect against the failures we’ve seen due to the global financial meltdown. Now, the International Monetary Fund has published a working paper which suggests exactly that as a possible left-field approach to protecting financial […]

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) have announced completion of a pilot project looking at the viability of bringing a micro-insurance scheme for earthquake risk to rural China. RMS say that with the appropriate support it is now viable to bring a product to market which could help protect low income households against major earthquakes through a […]

It’s really good to see that the Guardian newspaper, one of the largest circulation news sources in the UK, today carries an article on micro-insurance weather protection for farmers in India and the developing world. We are huge advocates of the potential benefits of these schemes, even though we do believe most currently in operation […]

Once again Standard & Poor’s have announced that the maturity date for Oil Casualty Insurance Ltd’s Avalon Re catastrophe bond notes has been extended. This is to allow further loss reporting to develop and be reported as it seems the full extent of losses suffered by this cat bond deal are still not fully known. The […]