Archive for December, 2010

Guy Carpenter have published a report looking at the devastating floods which have affected China this year. It was one of the worst flooding seasons since 1998 for China yet despite huge economic losses, insured losses will be low due to the extremely low penetration of insurance in China.

SCOR has announced that it has finalised the launch of its new 3 year, €150m natural catastrophe coverage facility. The new facility takes the form of an event driven guaranteed equity as an innovative contingent capital solution. This new contingent capital arrangement extends the protection SCOR has from natural catastrophes (which include other reinsurance and […]

CatCo Investment Management, who launched in Bermuda earlier this year, has successfully become the first to list a dedicated catastrophe investment vehicle on the London Stock Exchange. The CatCo Reinsurance Opportunities Fund raised $80m from investors.

WeatherPro, an Australian based weather risk specialist (subsidiary of European firm CelsiusPro and partner of Swiss Re) is to pay out more than AU$2m to Australian farmers whose crops were damaged by La Niña induced flooding, according to Australian farming news source The Land.

Environment Finance, a leading publication covering the environmental markets, has announced the results of its annual market survey. One of the subjects covered was the weather risk management market and as such we thought our readers would be interested in the poll results.

Aon Benfield has published their Annual Global Climate and Catastrophe Report for 2010 which reviews the natural disasters that occurred throughout the year and looks at the economic cost and the amount of insured losses which resulted from them.

Just over a month after American Family Mutual Insurance Co. closed its first ever catastrophe bond transaction, the $100m Mariah Re Ltd. Series 2010-1 thunderstorm catastrophe bond, they have again tapped the capital markets to secure a second tranche of Series 2010-2 cat bond cover under the same programme. Mariah Re Ltd. , a Caymans […]

Chartis have managed to secure $450m of catastrophe bond cover in their latest Lodestone Re Ltd. issuance. As we wrote previously here, Chartis sought to return to the cat bond market to secure further cover under their Lodestone Re Ltd. Bermuda domiciled SPV. The deal was initially said to be valued at $250m, split into […]

The notes issued by ALPS Capital II plc for an embedded value life insurance-linked securitization have been placed under review for a possible rating upgrade by Moody’s. Swiss Re sponsored the 2005 transaction which securitized future life profits of $370m by transferring closed block of life insurance policies risk to the capital markets to increase […]

Longevity risk was one of the topics discussed at the recent Swiss Re ILS media briefing Artemis attended. It’s a topic that is gaining increasing attention from re/insurers and also pension funds and it is a huge potential market which could open up to risk transfer to the capital markets.