Archive for January, 2010

Sompo Japan have released a press release to announce the launch of a new insurance product in Thailand to protect against drought. It’s good to see further advances in the weather index based insurance world as they expand to new regions. Although this is again a micro-insurance pilot scheme it’s hoped this could continue as […]

Hannover Re has announced that it has increased the volume of its K6 transaction (originally issued in 2009). K6 is comprised of portfolios of non-proportional reinsurance treaties in property catastrophe, marine and aviation lines.

Sometimes new products appear on the market which are both innovative and interesting to us here at Artemis. This one is particularly interesting as it utilises satellites to assess pasture greenness to create an index against which insurance products can be triggered.

The Hartford’s upcoming catastrophe bond, Foundation Re III Ltd., has been upsized to $180m during the marketing phase. The notes have been well received by investors we hear and the Hartford is taking advantage of this to raise the deal from its initial size of $100m. Full details on Foundation Re III Ltd. are available […]

GC Forecat, the pre-season hurricane forecast product from Guy Carpenter, is predicting higher than normal risk of landfalling hurricanes for the U.S. southeast region (coastline from Atlantic Florida-Georgia border to Cape Hatteras). That is the only region that their report (available via the excellent GCCapitalideas.com blog here) predicts a greater than normal risk of landfalling […]

Press coverage of the catastrophe bond markets prospects for 2010  just keeps getting more and more positive. One of the latest pieces from Bloomberg quotes Swiss Re as saying that they expect up to a 43% increase in sales over 2009 as maturing notes are replaced and new investors are lured to the market (by […]

Risk Management Solutions has expanded its range of Paradex parametric industry loss indices to include U.S. earthquakes. Previously Paradex just covered U.S. hurricane and European windstorms. The windstorm loss index for Europe was recently used to structure SCOR’s Atlas VI Capital Ltd. catastrophe bond so this new earthquake index should help future issuers of U.S. […]

Here’s an article on Mercer’s top tips for investment opportunities for 2010. In it they have again highlighted catastrophe bonds as a great investment for anyone looking to diversify into assets that are less linked to traditional market movements. They say diversity is the primary tool available to help investors improve their chances of success. […]

Good news from the Weather Risk Management Association (WRMA), the 12 year old trade association for the weather risk management industry, this week as they announced that they are to broaden the scope of its focus to include areas of weather risk management such as catastrophe bonds, insurance-linked securities and industry loss warranties.

Ever since the Lehman Brothers issues the catastrophe bond market has been haunted by the fallout. Now with the market seemingly well on the way back to full health Lehman is still making its presence felt as catastrophe bond deals which used their facilities for a total return swap continue to suffer.