Archive for March, 2011

The future of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has been in the balance for some time. There have been repeated calls from reinsurance industry figures and also some politicians to end the public subsidised  NFIP and to allow the private reinsurance and risk transfer markets to step in.

Investment manager GAM has announced the launch of a new catastrophe bond fund which aims to capture the structural return of the catastrophe bond market using a portfolio comprised of cat bonds and complimented by investments in other insurance-linked securities. Through the new fund, named GAM FCM Cat Bond, they seek to produce attractive, consistent […]

We’ve been saying since last November that the Netherlands looks like a good candidate to be the next European country to see an active longevity risk transfer and longevity swap market emerge. To date, all longevity swap deals have been completed in the UK over the last couple of years but the signs are there […]

Chubb’s latest catastrophe bond transaction in their series of East Lane Re deals has closed and upsized significantly to more than double the amount it was originally marketed at.

How counterparty ratings affect the rating of catastrophe bond notes could change if Standard & Poor’s decides to expand the scope of its counterparty criteria to include corporate issues with structured finance characteristics such as catastrophe bonds.

Australian states have been told that they can no longer rely on Commonwealth aid alone in the event of major natural disasters. The 30 year old natural disaster relief arrangements are to be rewritten following a government agreement yesterday which will state that the amount of relief given to states after a disaster will be […]

One of the interesting features of Munich Re’s Queen Street II Capital Ltd. catastrophe bond transaction is the collateral arrangements. The Queen Street II deal is still marketing at the moment but they have already established a fund to manage the investment collateral that the transaction will utilise.

Aon Benfield has released the latest edition of its monthly report which looks at the natural disasters and extreme weather events around the globe which occurred in the previous calendar month. The February edition of its Monthly Cat Recap report, published by Impact Forecasting (Aon’s catastrophe modelling arm), looks at events such as Cyclone Yassi […]

Homeowners, businesses, farmers and government agencies in Southeast Europe and the Caucasus will in future have access to more affordable natural disaster and weather insurance thanks to a World Bank financing. The World Bank has approved loans of $5m for Macedonia and Serbia as part of the South East Europe and Caucasus Regional Catastrophe Risk […]

Life settlement securitizations pose a unique set of risks and are one of the more rarely seen types of asset-backed securities. As a result Standard & Poor’s haven’t ever rated a life settlement securitization transaction, but that could change if issuers can address the risks associated with them.