Archive for June, 2009

47 Degrees North, a hedge fund backed by Iveagh the investment office of the Guiness family, has announced that it is launching a new fund-of-funds portfolio specially designed to be uncorrelated with other equities or fixed income. The new fund, named Innovation, will invest in other funds focusing on areas such as transportation, electricity, Middle-Eastern […]

All 16 member countries of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) have renewed their policies with the hurricane and earthquake insurance pool. Member governments have been able to take advantage of effectively a 10% decrease in premiums due to receiving more cover for the same premium as last year. By pooling their risk the […]

A recent storm in eastern India has again highlighted the fact that micro-finance weather insurance solutions need to be carefully designed in order to meet the needs of the policyholders. We’ve seen issues in the past with these schemes as payouts have not met with expectations of policyholders as their strict conditions of coverage are […]

Aspen Insurance Holdings has announced that it is taking it’s first step into the insurance-linked security fund management marketplace with an investment of $25m in a newly formed ILS fund. They have partnered with and invested in a newly formed specialised investment fund, Cartesian Iris 2009A which is focused on insurance linked securities and reinsurance. Aspen […]

The results of the most recent annual survey by the Weather Risk Management Association and Pricewaterhouse Coopers have been released at the WRMA conference yesterday. Here are some of the highlights of the report which covered the period April 1st to March 31st. Volume of contracts exchanged, both in OTC and exchange traded deals plummeted to […]

A new entrant to the Bermuda reinsurance market is planning to offer predominantly industry loss warranties. Iris Re, which began operating on Wednesday, has been created by private equity firm Cartesian Capital Group LLC. Cartesian say they have created the reinsurer to provide much needed reinsurance capacity at a time when the capital market investment […]

We’re pleased to be able to exclusively announce to our readers that a new electronic trading platform for the industry loss warrant and secondary catastrophe bond trading markets is now live and and operational with live pricing. MYRIAS provides real-time access to these instruments online in a secure and anonymous OTC trading environment. MYRIAS promises to […]

Two catastrophe bond deals have closed in the past couple of days. The first is the Ianus Capital deal issued by Munich Re to provide them with European windstorm and Turkish earthquake cover. The deal was marketed as a €100m transaction but actually came to market as €50m due to investor hesitance caused by a […]

The founders and management team of Galileo Weather have Risk Management Advisors LLC have made an agreement to buy the company from the White Mountains Insurance Group. Galileo Weather was originally set up as the weather and contingent risk arm of White Mountains with much of it’s principals and management team coming from the old […]

AMP Capital Investors, a multi-fund specialist investment manager, has selected Bermudian insurance-linked securities specialists Nephila Capital to manage a new $44m mandate that will invest in a range of insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bonds. AMP Capital Investors director of investment Sean Henaghan said “We are impressed with the non-correlation of the returns in the insurance-linked […]