Archive for April, 2011

CATCo, the specialist Bermuda based investment manager who operate the London listed CATCo Reinsurance Opportunities Fund, are to seek additional capital by way of a C-Share issuance. They say that current market conditions offer them attractive investment opportunities with the ability to write a portfolio of risk in May/June including enhanced premiums in excess of […]

The 11th March earthquake which struck Japan causing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage and killing tens of thousands of people also made an impact on the catastrophe bond market, particularly on the pricing spread between their bid and ask prices.

A significant aftershock has struck the northeast of Japan within the past hour. The earthquake was said to be between 7.1 and 7.4 on the richter scale, to put that into perspective it is about 1,000 times less powerful than the earthquake on the 11th March in the same region.

February’s earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand continues to have implications for the re/insurance market and the NZ government as it comes to light that an insurer, AMI Insurance, did not have enough reinsurance cover to back-up the volume of claims it’s experiencing from the disaster.

The creation and issuance of insurance-linked security transactions specifically for private investors benefit is a trend we are likely to see increasing as the ILS and catastrophe bond markets mature, more investors get involved and investment managers seek new ways to provide capacity in the market for their customers.

Bloomberg reports that Holcim, the second largest cement producer in the world, is going to offer catastrophe microinsurance to customers in developing countries and emerging markets as an additional sales tool giving them a way to mitigate some of the risks of constructing homes in catastrophe prone countries.

Colorado State University have just issued their updated 2011 Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane season forecast, so in the interest of fairness (as we’ve already covered Accuweather’s and Tropical Storm Risk’s) here are the details.

In December last year Tropical Storm Risk, a research group backed by Aon Benfield, RSA and Crawford & Company, issued their first forecast for the 2011 Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane season which predicted an active year approximately 40% above historical norms. Their 1st April update has lowered that prediction to 25% above the historical […]

Alterra Capital, the global insurance and reinsurance group, has announced the formation of a new sidecar vehicle designed to provide additional capacity for the property catastrophe collateralized reinsurance market. After the catastrophic start to the year additional capacity should be well received by market participants.

The Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX) has issued a press release to announce that they have hit a record volume of insurance-linked securities (catastrophe bonds) listed on their exchange. The recent completion of the Munich Re issued Queen Street II Capital Ltd. transaction has taken the amount of cat bonds listed in Bermuda to $1.814 billion.