Archive for April, 2011

We’ve written before about the Philippines government considering the use of catastrophe bonds to help them protect their infrastructure and finances from natural disasters and to enable them to recover more quickly when disaster strikes. The country has exposure to many of the peak perils which cat bonds are used to cover and the topic […]

Chubb Corporation, one of the largest insurance groups and a regular sponsor of catastrophe bonds, recently announced their results for the first quarter of 2011 and held an earnings conference call which featured comments from their senior management team. As an active sponsor of cat bonds it’s always interesting to hear any comments they make […]

Munich Reinsurance America Inc. are actively marketing the second catastrophe bond in the Johnston Re series of deals. As with their 2010 Johnston Re cat bond, the deal provides U.S. hurricane cover for Munich Re America for a reinsurance agreement they have with two North Carolina non-profit insurance associations, the North Carolina Joint Underwriters Assn. […]

It’s been two weeks since we last looked at the Swiss Re Cat Bond Performance Indices to see how they are performing as the market continues to adjust to the post Japan quake market situation. We still don’t know the final toll for catastrophe bonds which were exposed to the 11th March earthquake and tsunami, […]

According to the Wall Street Journal, AIG have recently been seeking to sell notes from a new life settlement securitization to investors but have been facing difficulties getting interest from investors who view these types of insurance-linked securitization deals as risky.

Re/insurers should expect to be billed for insured losses of around $52.6 billion for the first quarter of this year. That compares to a total of $40.b billion for the whole of 2010 according to a report from Aon Benfield. The latest edition of their Fac Quarterly report really brings home the scale of losses […]

The China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) is encouraging insurers to trial methods to extend agricultural insurance cover to include greater protection against weather related insurance losses in the country. There has been a lot of discussion of the importance of food security recently and China, with its climate and huge population, is particularly exposed.

In a recent white paper titled ‘Longevity and Pensions – protecting company pensions against longevity’ AEGON argue that companies need to actively investigate the level of longevity risk their pension scheme faces and proactively de-risk themselves. They say that despite longevity being seen as a relatively new risk to pension schemes there are now a […]

The 2011 Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane season doesn’t officially begin until the 1st June, but already meteorologists are closely watching an area north of the Leeward Islands where a wave has formed which they say has the potential to develop into a tropical disturbance.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has recently added a new location where monthly and seasonal rainfall index futures can be traded. The CME now offer ten locations in the U.S. where these rainfall weather risk products can be bought and sold.