Archive for October, 2010

Another month has passed since our last post looking at the health of the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond indices which are published by Swiss Re. These indices give us a good indication of the health of cat bond prices and returns and also investor activity and appetite.

Swiss Re have begun marketing for two new series of mortality catastrophe bond notes to be issued by the Vita Capital IV Ltd. special purpose vehicle which is domiciled in the Cayman Islands. These two series of notes will add to the two series Swiss Re issued through Vita Capital IV in the last twelve […]

The European Life Settlement Association (ELSA), who recently set up a regulatory committee, have now released a code of practice which aims to provide industry standards for its members to use which will help to protect investors in this market.

The results of a survey undertaken by Lucida, an insurance company focused on annuity and longevity risk business, seem to show that pension funds worries about longevity risks are decreasing and their appetite to use longevity swaps to transfer their risks is lower than last year.

To date there haven’t been any insurance-linked securities that we know of which have covered risks in the Middle East. However we do know that there are interested parties in the region who have been looking at different methods of hedging risk and assessing how they might fit within the Middle Eastern financial marketplace.

Standard & Poor’s have issued a report (available to Ratings Direct subscribers here) which discusses the role that the bond markets and capital markets in general have to play in financing countries response to and mitigation efforts for climate change. The report identifies that there are issues to overcome before institutional investors will allow their […]

The 2010 Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane season has been unusual in many ways. We’ve witnessed some extremely powerful storms and intense activity in the Atlantic and yet losses and landfalls have been light. Officially, the Atlantic hurricane season ends on the 30th November but the next two weeks are the most likely for a […]

We’ve already covered the Green Valley Ltd. catastrophe bond in some detail on this blog (here and here) and it now resides in our catastrophe bond deal directory. Swiss Re, who issued and arranged the deal, have sent out a press release today announcing completion of the transaction which we felt worth posting for the […]

Lane Financial LLC (LFC) have published a report looking at market performance for the third quarter of the indices of insurance-linked securities they monitor. Lane Financial specialise in assessing the pricing and returns of ILS and catastrophe bonds.

Liberty Syndicates Management Ltd., a member of the Liberty Mutual Group, has announced that it is to enter the weather and agricultural reinsurance markets after a new team of specialist underwriters were hired for that purpose.