Archive for May, 2011

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and reinsurer Swiss Re have been working on a natural disaster insurance facility for the Dominican Republic for over a year (our previous coverage on this facility). Now, the project is getting nearer to launch and has passed another milestone as the IDB have provided the Dominican Republic with a […]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has voted to propose new rules and amendments to the way ratings agencies conduct their business. The proposed rules, which the members of the SEC voted to put out for comments for sixty days to get feedback from interested parties, are intended to increase transparency and improve the […]

Everyone involved in the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities market is well aware that investor interest in the sector is at an all time high and that the primary market isn’t providing sufficient new capacity to allow all these new, eager investors to access the returns the market can offer. Private catastrophe risk securitization transactions […]

North Carolina hurricane risk catastrophe bond Johnston Re Ltd. Series 2011-1 has closed successfully at a size of just under $202m, slightly upsized from the initial offering amount that the deal was marketed to investors at. This brings cat bond market issuance for 2011 to over $1.4 billion according to data from our catastrophe bond […]

Verisk Analytics, the parent company of AIR Worldwide and the Property Claims Services (PCS) brands, has expanded its Verisk Catastrophe Index to include U.S. earthquake risks. When the index was launched in July last year it only covered U.S. hurricane risks but Verisk planned to broaden its coverage to include other perils such as tropical […]

Estimates for damage caused by the severe thunderstorms and tornadoes at the end of April have been rising in recent days. The highest insured loss estimate we had heard was the one from AIR Worldwide who put losses at up to $5.5 billion for weather conditions between the 22nd – 28th April. Now Risk Management […]

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) have released an upgrade to their Miu insurance-linked securities management platform. Version 2.6 of Miu, a platform that allows investors to analyse and manage portfolios of catastrophe bonds, sidecars, industry loss warranties and reinsurance contracts, includes some new features which provide better insight into underlying risk exposures and more powerful transaction […]

Risk Management Solutions have released a set of model benchmark catastrophe bonds which have been designed to compare how risk models from different vendors (or different models versions from the same vendor) perform. The benchmark cat bonds will provide a standardised structure against which to compare the analysis that risk models output.

The prospect of higher reinsurance rates is beginning to seem more of an inevitability as reinsurance firms and industry experts suggest that rate rises are already being seen in some regions of the world and expected to start soon in others. A.M. Best report today that re/insurers are preserving capital in anticipation of higher rates […]

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has transferred a portion of its pensioner members liabilities to Pension Corporation (PIC) in a buy-in transaction which see’s PIC insure all their current pension scheme members and automatically insure future pensioners for the next five years. The innovative deal effectively minimises the LSE’s pension risks over a fixed term […]