Archive for October, 2010

As we all know, reinsurance pricing has been softening of late and this means there is plenty of reinsurance capacity available at good prices for insurers to snap up. This has been making the insurance-linked security and catastrophe bond market seem more expensive and less competitive as an alternative hedging mechanism, but perhaps that trend […]

In our second of this series of Artemis interviews we are delighted to have been able to speak with another well known figure from the insurance-linked security and catastrophe bond market. Christophe Fritsch,  Head of ILS at AXA Investment Managers, has been involved in the market for a number of years and created their insurance-linked […]

Aon Benfield is warning insurers in Asia that they need to prepare for future ‘Supercat’ events of the size and magnitude of those experienced in the U.S. A supercat is defined as an event which generates an insured market loss of at least $10b.

Aon Benfield Securities have today published their report looking at the catastrophe bond market during the third quarter of 2010. These reports are a great way to look at the general market health and outlook for the next quarter. As well as a look at the transactions which occurred the report also discusses the Aon […]

A lack of new catastrophe bond issuance causing a subdued primary market has resulted in a lack of new investment opportunities for managers such as Clariden Leu which they say is the reason they issued their recent ‘cat bond lite’ transaction. The novel transaction was developed to create investment capacity for Clariden’s insurance-linked security investment […]

Earlier this year in February we wrote about the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and it’s plan to move a portion of its investments into insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bonds as a way to secure better returns during the global financial crisis. It seems that move was a positive one for the fund.

Microfinance has not to date proved to be the most commercially viable area to expand into for many large insurers however that is changing and as regulation improves, technology is developed and the idea becomes more accepted it is beginning to be looked on as an area of potential growth and opportunity.

A new microinsurance product is targeting cooperatives in the Philippines to give them an affordable source of parametric insurance to protect them against the knock on effects to their loan portfolios from extreme weather events involving wind and rainfall.

Hot on the heels of the completion of the recent Green Valley catastrophe bond another cat bond transaction designed to cover windstorm risks in Europe has begun marketing to investors. This €150m Calypso Capital Ltd. issuance is being arranged by GC Securities and Swiss Re Capital Markets on behalf of AXA Global P&C.

The U.S. Climate Prediction Center has issued an update on their El Niño and La Niña forecast. We’ve been experiencing La Niña conditions around the world for a few months and these conditions affect weather patterns, rainfall and hurricanes or storms around the world.