Archive for November, 2010

USAA has begun marketing a new series of catastrophe bond notes to add to its Residential Reinsurance 2010 Ltd. transaction. We assume that USAA is seeking to take advantage of investor appetite to secure further coverage for its U.S. peril exposure through this additional issuance.

SCOR, the French reinsurer, have recently published their new strategic three year plan dubbed ‘Strong Momentum‘. A lot of the presentation which details the plan is devoted to SCOR Global Investments (SGI), their investment management arm and how they want to expand it and increase its contributions to group profits.

Plenum Investments Ltd., a Zurich based fund manager, has selected Risk Management Solutions (RMS) Miu platform to help it manage its recently launched catastrophe bond fund.

Swiss Re has announced the introduction of a new index-based insurance program which aims to protect rice farmers in Vietnam from losses they incur due to low rice yields caused by weather and natural catastrophes. The program is being implemented with Swiss Re capacity and their knowledge and expertise has helped to define the scope […]

Clariden Leu closed access to their flagship catastrophe bond funds earlier this year in June. The reason given at the time was that the volume of new issuance in the primary cat bond market was too low to give investors the opportunities the fund was designed for.

Microinsurance is beginning to show the potential for growth that market participants and commentators have been predicting. At the heart of that growth is the provision of weather index linked insurance to farmers and businesses in developing countries.

Lancashire Holdings, a Bermudian insurer who focuses on short-tail, specialty insurance, has revealed its use of industry loss warranties (ILW) in its latest quarterly report. The Q3 2010 report was published on the 8th November.

A report from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation highlights one of the fastest growing risks to re/insurers in Florida, sinkholes. Sinkhole related claims have been rising fast and have been spreading to areas of Florida not previously known for this issue.

We wrote back in September about the announcement from Hannover Re that the Florida state insurance regulator had lowered the collateral requirement which was required of Hannover Re to allow them to participate in the Florida market. Now that change is widening to more reinsurers.

Standard & Poor’s has issued a report which reiterates that one of the key exposures in a securitization transaction (that includes insurance-linked securitization through catastrophe bonds) is counterparty risk. The risk of a counterparty being unable to meet its obligations within a transaction is central to S&P’s analysis of creditworthiness.