Archive for November, 2010

Livemint.com, an Indian based financial and business news website, is reporting that Swiss Re has been in talks with the Indian Central and state governments to propose methods to minimise risks to the countries finances and population from natural catastrophes.

Aon Benfield has issued a briefing on uncommon European winter storm tracks derived from research with the University of Cologne. The briefing hints at a lower total number of events in the future but shows intense storms moving across the North and Baltic seas on a similar path to windstorm Kyril.

Flooding is a real problem in Canada. The insurance industry reacted to this problem in the past by making it impossible for Canadian homeowners to purchase overland flood insurance for their properties. Instead they have to rely on government assistance programs after flood events.

The UK’s Met Office says that its scientists have made a major breakthrough in forcasting the number of Atlantic tropical storms. The Decadal Climate Prediction System (DePreSys), developed at the Met Office is said to predict storms years ahead of the current season.

Mariah Re Ltd. the catastrophe bond issued by American Family Mutual Insurance to provide itself with cover against U.S. thunderstorms, has closed and been rated by Standard & Poor’s. S&P assigned its ‘B’ rating to the transaction.

WeatherBill, the weather insurance specialists who offer a number of products such as their RainCheck insurance, have launched a new product offering what they call Total Weather Insurance™ to the U.S. agriculture industry. Available for the 2011 crop year the new product is said to offer unprecedented protection for farmers profits.

Coriolis Capital Ltd., the London based investment firm who specialise in insurance-linked securities, catastrophe bonds and weather hedging instruments such as derivatives have been featured in an article on Opalesque today.

AIFAM Inc. has managed an insurance-linked securities catastrophe bond investment fund since 2006 when it launched a dedicated cat bond investment opportunity. The $34m cat bond fund has returned 10% to investors this year and 47.4% including interest since it was launched. Now AIFAM are seeking to grow that side of their hedge fund management […]

Hymans Robertson LLP, the pensions actuarial consultancy, has predicted a buoyant pension scheme risk transfer market for the 4th quarter of 2010 and into 2011. In a report published last week Hymans Robertson they said they expect to see a quarter of FTSE 100 companies enter into a material pension scheme risk transfer deal by […]

More details about the new series of catastrophe bond notes being issued under USAA’s Residential Reinsurance 2010 program are beginning to come to light. As we wrote the other day, USAA is seeking to secure further cat bond cover through the issuance of a Series 2010-II additional layer of cover.