Archive for November, 2009

Flagstone Re has just released a press release announcing the completion of its Montana Re Ltd. U.S. hurricane and earthquake catastrophe bond. As we reported last week the deal completed at $175m in value (up from the initial amount of $120m that Flagstone started marketing the transaction at). As ever, full details on this transaction […]

Swiss Re have published a sneak preview of a forthcoming Sigma report which looks at catastrophe losses during 2009. Although there’s a month to go in the year Swiss Re say that barring any major loss events in December they expect insured losses for the full year of 2009 to be around $24b.

What’s the sign of a successful insurance-linked securities issuance? This time last year you would have said just getting to the marketing phase would have been commendable. Then when the market came back to life it was great to get a deal to complete without any major problems. Now, and this has been a trend […]

Munich Re has issued a press release saying that climate change is one of the biggest challenges faced by mankind. If we don’t They say that there is clear evidence that climate change is a contributing factor to increasing natural catastrophe losses and that ambitious targets are needed from the Copenhagen climate summit.

There was a time in this market when talk of a downgrade or loss would have stimulated talk of the collapse of the catastrophe bond and the failure of the alternative risk markets to protect its investors. I’m pleased to say that the market and its observers seem to have matured enough to realise that […]

Reinsurance firm SCOR has demonstrated the attraction that microinsurance has as a new line of business by investing in the first microinsurance fund LeapFrog Investments Ltd. Microinsurance is receiving increasing interest from the wider insurance and reinsurance markets as they realise that as well as providing cover to people in developing countries who previously had […]

As we hinted a week ago, SCOR is preparing to launch a new catastrophe bond transaction within the next two weeks. Atlas VI Capital Ltd., a $75m deal (that may rise given the interest in recent transactions) is being launched to provide SCOR Global P&C SE with cover between December 2009 and April 2013.

Moody’s has downgraded the ratings of one tranche of the Nelson Re Ltd. catastrophe bond transaction and placed two other tranches on review for possible downgrade. The June 2008 cat bond issued on behalf of Glacier Re is a $180m three year deal.

Swiss Re have now completed their latest life insurance securitization, Vita Capital IV Ltd. The mortality bond transaction provides Swiss Re with $75m of cover against severe population mortality in the U.S. or the UK. The deal covers a five-year risk period ending in 2014. The notes issued by Vita Capital have been rated ‘BB+’ […]

Allianz and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have issued a report (press announcement available here) looking into the ‘tipping points’ associated with climate change and global warming. The report looks into the impacts of what they call tipping point issues such as shifting of the monsoons, sea level rise on the east coast U.S. and […]