Archive for February, 2011

The British Virgin Islands (BVI) could look to become a domicile for insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bonds as a way for it to diversify away from relying on more traditional captive business, according to an article by James McConvill of Appleby Global (a provider of offshore legal and administrative services).

PERILS AG, the independent Zurich-based company providing industry-wide European catastrophe insurance data, has issued its fourth and final update of its loss estimate for the European windstorm Xynthia which occurred on 28th February 2010. The PERILS loss reporting schedule dictates that the final loss reporting should be 12 months after the event.

It’s almost one year on from the 27th February 2010 earthquake in Chile and reinsurance intermediary Aon Benfield has issued a report which looks into the science behind the earthquake, the impact on the local insurance market and global reinsurers and outlines steps which can help insurers prepare for similar catastrophes.

The New Zealand Earthquake Commission (EQC) may fully deplete its reserves paying claims for the recent Christchurch earthquake and have to call on the government to help them pay the remainder from the 6.3 magnitude quake. Standard & Poor’s have kept the EQC’s triple-A rating intact but point out that if the insured loss is […]

With farmers in Kenya increasingly fearing large weather-related losses to their crops and livestock, and the access to weather data and infrastructure improving, the Kilimo Salama crop weather insurance program launched by UAP Insurance, Syngenta Foundation and mobile operator Safaricom is going to expand in scope and availability.

As many as eighty cooperatives in the Philippines are said to be considering a microinsurance product (our previous coverage here) designed to protect them from the impact to their loan portfolios caused by natural disasters and extreme weather involving wind and rainfall.

We’ve followed up on our story from last Friday about the cooperative efforts between the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and reinsurer Swiss Re to create a catastrophe insurance facility for the Dominican Republic. We spoke with Guillermo Collich, a principal financial markets specialist at the IDB to get a better understanding of the proposed facility.

It seems that microinsurance, at least in some areas of the world, is now prevalent enough and that after a disaster strikes insurers are seeing large increases in applications for microinsurance policies to protect locals from any future events. This suggests that the marketing efforts which have been ongoing in this sector are beginning to […]

Insured loss estimates for the recent earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand have been rising steadily as reports emerge from different sources. It is extremely likely that the insured loss total from this latest event will be higher than the losses from the earthquake in September as the ground shaking was so much more pronounced and […]

The sun last week sent out the strongest solar flare for the last four years and scientists warn that this is a sign of things to come as we head toward a period of increased sunspot and solar storm activity. The next solar maximum, as it is called, is expected in 2013. This is when […]