Archive for January, 2010

The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility has announced that the earthquake which struck Haiti yesterday was sufficiently severe to trigger the full policy limit for their earthquake coverage. Haiti has paid $385,500 for it’s cover and will receive a payment of $8m after the standard 14 day waiting period the facility enforces. That’s a much […]

The Hartford Fire Insurance Company is getting prepared to launch a $100m catastrophe bond through its Foundation SPV based in the Cayman Islands. Foundation Re III Ltd. is currently being marketed at a preliminary amount of $100m as a transaction designed to provide the Hartford with reinsurance on a per-occurrence basis over a four year […]

A very interesting press release arrived in my email inbox this evening announcing and innovative transaction in the Regulation XXX arena that has just been completed. Karson Management, a company formed by well known industry experts has set up a specialist alternative collateral provider to provide collateral to insurance and reinsurance companies, Lloyd’s members and […]

State Farm’s catastrophe bond Merna Reinsurance Ltd. has had its ratings affirmed by Fitch Ratings on $1.2B of its notes and term-loans. The affirmation of ratings is due to the fact that the transaction only runs for another five months, being 80% complete, and that no insurance losses at all have been ceded to Merna […]

Regular readers of Artemis might remember our article from a year ago which asked some of our industry friends for their opinions on the prospects for insurance-linked securities and weather risk management for 2009. Looking back at that article, a lot of the predictions were accurate and it ended up being the most viewed article […]

So the New York Insurance Exchange is back in the news (via the NY Times) again this week with Gov. David A. Paterson announcing plans for a Lloyd’s of London style insurance and reinsurance exchange. Aiming to specialise in complex risks such as hurricane, other catastrophe, terror risks and hard to place liabilities the thought […]

As I’ve been saying for some time now, 2010 could be a busy year for the cat bond market. Now both Risk Management Solutions and Munich Re have come out in agreement. RMS says (in this press release) that  it’s been the most active 4th quarter of cat bond activity ever and that almost 70% […]

We missed this press release during December from Risk Management Solutions explaining that another investment manager with interests in insurance-linked securities has chosen to use their Miu platform. Falcon Private Bank is said to manage $150m worth of ILS and has selected Miu to help them better analyse catastrophe scenarios impact on their portfolio.

One interesting fact of the catastrophe bonds issued during 2009 is the amount that have originated from primary insurers rather than from reinsurers. Historically the majority of cat bonds are issued by reinsurance companies looking to offset the risks they have taken on from primary insurers but 2009 saw that change.

Swiss Re have just announced the completion of the Redwood Capital XI Ltd. California earthquake risk cat bond which was featured on Artemis early in December. No further details have emerged on the transaction structure itself (we have more in our Deal Directory) but this announcement does officially take 2009’s market issuance to around $3.5B. […]