Archive for December, 2010

Reinsurer PartnerRe Ltd. has upped its loss estimate for the September 3rd, Christchurch New Zealand earthquake. The quake damaged over 100,000 homes, cut water and sewage lines and  and loss estimates have been rising as more and more claims come to light.

Our latest interview is with Simon Young, CEO of Caribbean Risk Managers Ltd. (CaribRM), a risk management consultancy firm who provide services such as hazard and risk modelling, business analytics, GIS-based data management systems, and risk surveying and control solutions. CaribRM are also facility supervisors for the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility. As such we […]

Swiss Re have published their latest Sigma study on the subject of the microinsurance market and its potential to provide insurance cover for up to 4 billion people around the world. The microinsurance market is growing but still remains an area of huge potential growth as it currently focuses on few classes of risk and […]

PERILS AG, the independent Zurich-based company providing industry-wide European catastrophe insurance data, has announced that more than $1 billion worth of risk transactions have been placed using their industry loss index. A total of $1.05 billion of risk has now been placed, and with cat bonds still in the pipeline that could rise by year […]

Reading the news lately you would be forgiven for thinking that the weather risk management industry isn’t doing enough to promote its services. Recently there have been many items in the press discussing loss of earnings due to inclement weather and as we all know this should be avoidable now that you can smooth your […]

We now have further details for you about Swiss Re’s latest Vega Capital Ltd. catastrophe bond transaction (which we wrote about yesterday here). The $106.5m deal provides Swiss Re with cover for some of their North Atlantic hurricane, European windstorm, Californian earthquake, Japanese earthquake and Japanese typhoon risks.

The agreements signed at the recent Cancun United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change summit show that insurance and climate risk transfer were high on the agenda at the conference. Many representatives from the re/insurance and risk modelling world were present and promoting the various methods that could be used to create a re/insurance facility.

At a press briefing held at their London offices this morning, Swiss Re predicted that the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market will return to absolute growth during 2011 following three years where outstanding risk capital contracted.

Swiss Re has issued two new tranches of notes under its Vega Capital Ltd. catastrophe bond style Cayman Islands SPV. The new transaction replicates the 2008 Vega Capital deal and will provide Swiss Re with another $106.5m of cover against accumulated losses.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is to begin a research project looking into longevity risk in January. One of the aims of the research (according to Global Pensions) is to look into the possibility of establishing government issued life expectancy indices.