Archive for April, 2011

Strong investor demand and attractive market conditions resulted in a record first quarter of 2011 for catastrophe bond issuance said Willis Capital Markets & Advisory (WCMA) in their recently published Q1 cat bond market report. $1 billion of catastrophe bonds were issued during Q1 2011 compared to $650m in the same quarter last year.

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) have finally issued an insured loss estimate for the earthquake and tsunami disaster in northeast Japan on the 11th March. RMS estimate that insured property losses from the event will be between $18 billion to $26 billion. Adding in life and health claims they put the final insured loss at somewhere […]

Investors are actively being marketed a new series of catastrophe bond notes by insurer Allianz. This latest cat bond issuance by long time market participant Allianz is a new series of notes which it is marketing under its Cayman Islands domiciled SPV Blue Fin Ltd.

Plenum Investments, a respected manager with a focus on alternatives such as insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bonds, saw a 3.3% decline in their Plenum Cat Bond Fund in March due to exposure to the earthquake in Japan through cat bonds they hold positions in.

CATCo, the specialist Bermuda based investment manager with a fund listed on the London Stock Exchange, have published their third monthly update since their CATCO Reinsurance Opportunities Fund’s inception at the start of the year. The fund saw a return of 0.82% in March and year to date has returned 2.8% which is not far […]

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to press ahead with plans for a disaster insurance fund after a meeting of their finance ministers last Friday in Bali. The ministers agreed that a regional disaster and catastrophe insurance facility is essential to deal with events such as earthquakes, typhoons and tsunamis […]

Japan has suffered another M7.1 aftershock which has hit in the Fukushima area with the epicentre onshore. Buildings swayed in Tokyo where some train lines have been stopped and the runway at Narita airport was checked for damage. The Fukushima nuclear power plant was again evacuated and checks are being made for any damage.

The catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities market is coming to terms with the Japanese earthquake and tsunami disaster which struck the northeast of the country a month ago. The market reaction, reflected in recent changes in cat bond pricing, was to be expected when an event is assumed to have caused losses. Now, one month […]

In our latest interview we spoke with Peter Nakada, Director of RiskMarkets at Risk Management Solutions (RMS) the risk modelling firm who provide services and expertise for the quantification and management of catastrophe risks.

The recent earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan have stimulated discussion of the financial exposure to earthquakes in other countries around the world. Canada, not a country you generally associate as at major risk of quake damage, is beginning to see calls for their quake exposure to be measured accurately so that risk management and […]