Archive for July, 2009

It’s been widely reported in the last few weeks that an El Nino weather pattern is developing in the Pacific. The phenomenon causes a warming of the Pacific ocean which in turn affects weather patterns globally, although the worst affected are those surrounding the Pacific. El Nino conditions are thought to cause a weaker monsoon […]

Further details have come to light, via the Standard & Poor’s rating announcement, about Hannover Re’s Eurus II cat bond and it’s novel repurchase agreement collateral set up. The deal is being arranged by BNP Paribas and Aon Benfield Securities with AIR Worldwide providing risk modelling services and acting as calculation agent. The E75m deal […]

Aon France has brokered a weather refund protection insurance scheme for two French travel agencies. The scheme provides customers of holiday groups Pierre et Vacances and FranceLoc with the ability to claim back the cost of part of their trip should it rain at least four days out of a week while they are away. […]

Hannover Re are planning a return to the catastrophe bond market with a €75m deal featuring non-U.S. perils and a novel approach to the collateral problem. It’s great to hear that Hannover Re are happy to return to the market given that in March they weren’t interested due to the costs being too high. The […]

Swiss Reinsurance America Corp. has returned to the cat bond market to issue the third deal this year involving Swiss Re. Parkton Reinsurance Ltd. is a Cayman Islands special purpose vehicle set up to issue a $125m bond on behalf of two North Carolina nonprofit insurance associations (the North Carolina Joint Underwriting Association and the […]

GlobalAgRisk Inc has started a research programme looking to develop new index-based weather risk management tools and pilot test them in developing countries. The products will be created with the aim of helping smallholder farmers to continue to farm their land safe in the knowledge that major losses from local climate risks will be covered. […]

More evidence of the continue resurgence of the insurance-linked securities market has emerged in the past two days. As the pressures on the market are dissipating and issuance has been good over the last few months it seems interest is returning to companies looking to support deals and grab a slice of the action. Firstly […]

Reinsurance rates have been seen to be mostly stable at the recent mid-year renewals with plenty of capacity available. Reinsurers were hoping for big increases in price and insurers had been fearing the worst all year, but the resulting rises are lower than predicted. Property catastrophe reinsurance rates were up about 5%-10% year-on-year depending on […]

The Caribbean islands are particularly prone to the risks and potential impact of climate change. Their financial status, stage of development of their economies and geography leave them particularly vulnerable to both the perils of sea level rise and increased frequency of natural disasters. The World Bank helped to form the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance […]

MDA Earthsat has announced that they will be providing weather data products to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) for Hiroshima, Japan. That will be the third Japanese city to be made available to trade with CME weather futures.