Archive for February, 2011

Hartford Fire Insurance Co. has reportedly closed its latest catastrophe bond transaction under their Foundation Re III Ltd. special purpose vehicle which is domiciled in the Cayman Islands. Bloomberg reports here that the deal closed on February 15th and secured $135m of U.S. hurricane catastrophe bond cover for Hartford and certain group companies.

Puerto Rico faces considerable risk of earthquakes and in the last 500 years has faced five quakes which had a magnitude greater than seven on the richter scale, three of those earthquakes generated tsunamis. Now the island nation has been reassessing the risks and looking at ways to manage and mitigate earthquake risks.

We’ve been following the development of the microinsurance market for weather index insurance with great interest at Artemis. As a product it seems perfect for developing nations as it is easily understood and gives predictable payouts based on actual weather conditions. Weather index insurance has received the backing of organisations such as the World Bank […]

We’ve been bringing you regular monthly updates on the Swiss Re Cat Bond Performance Indices for over a year now (our latest here) and have been following the return to health of the cat bond market as evidenced by the rising indices. Now Swiss Re have published a report which echoes that sentiment and provides […]

A report published today by Mercer and a group of leading global investors concludes that continuing to delay on climate change policy action and a lack of international coordination could cost institutional investors trillions of dollars. Failure to factor climate change into a long term investment strategy could result in both losses and missed opportunities.

Ratings agency A.M. Best has long been a proponent of ensuring that the basis risk of non-indemnity catastrophe bond transactions is transparent and fully disclosed in order to calculate the amount of reinsurance credit that can be claimed by a cat bonds sponsor. Now in a report on their outlook for the U.S. P&C insurance […]

Egypt is just emerging from a two week period of unrest and revolution. It’s still unclear which direction the country will head in now that its government has been torn apart and replaced by the heads of the army but it does look like a new form of Middle Eastern democracy could emerge and insurers […]

ALPS Capital II plc, originally issued in December 2005, is an Embedded Value Life-Insurance-Linked Securitization backed by a closed block of life insurance policies. As we wrote in December, the deal had been reassessed for a possible rating upgrade by ratings agency Moody’s. Moody’s now report that it has upgraded the ratings on it’s B, […]

It’s been a month since we last looked at the Swiss Re catastrophe bond indices to see what they signal as to the health of the market. The downward trend in pricing which was experienced through all of December has halted and a small rebound in pricing has been seen through January.

The Hartford is once again returning to the catastrophe bond market with its latest issuance in the Foundation Re series of deals. Active in cat bond issuance since 2004 when it issued its first Foundation Re transaction, The Hartford has become a regular issuer of insurance-linked securities to provide it with multi-peril reinsurance protection. This […]