Archive for July, 2011

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has now finished resolving the ratings issues surrounding 16 catastrophe bond tranches which use the Risk Management Solutions (RMS) U.S. hurricane model. The RMS model was updated earlier this year causing the probability of attachment for some cat bonds to increase, thus resulting in an assessment and new rating from S&P.

The slowdown that has been experienced in primary catastrophe bond issuance since March when the huge earthquake struck Japan is going to impact revenues for some of the companies who participate in cat bond deals when they report their Q2 2011 earnings. After an active year of issuance in 2010 the noticeable slowdown this year […]

Further details have emerged on the completion of Munich Re’s latest catastrophe bond transaction issued through their Queen Street III Capital Ltd. special purpose vehicle. The deal completed yesterday, and as we wrote at the time managed to triple the amount of protection originally sought by closing at an upsized $150m.

The catastrophe bond lite transactions, which were issued by Swiss insurance-linked securities investment manager Clariden Leu to provide more capacity to satisfy the investor inflows they were experiencing, have been recognised with an award. Environmental Finance magazine have awarded the Catastrophe Risk Deal of the Year award to Clariden Leu as recognition of these transactions innovative […]

Munich Re’s latest catastrophe bond, issued by their newly domiciled in Ireland SPV Queen Street III Capital Ltd., began marketing as a $50m issuance when we wrote about it on the 15th July. Thanks to significant investor demand for a European windstorm cat bond, which offered investors an opportunity for portfolio diversification, the deal finally […]

Allianz Reinsurance have announced a new technology based approach to crop insurance that they have been working on. In cooperation with software company Sarmap, who specialise in finding ways to better manage earths resources, they have developed radar-based remote sensing software which will not only allow measurement of biomass growth, but also monitors and measures […]

Record rainfall in South Korea in recent days has caused significant damage and loss of life from flooding and landslides. As much as 16 inches of rain was recorded in a 24 hour period in the capital Seoul, an astounding amount of precipitation for a short time span. Despite the fact that South Korea is […]

The fourth named storm of the 2011 Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane season has formed in the southern Gulf of Mexico and is now making its way towards the Texas coast. Tropical storm Don formed late yesterday and is heading on a west-northwest track which should bring it to the Texas coast in 40 to […]

Avondale Securities SA., Luxembourg domiciled issuer of  life insurance-linked notes issued on behalf of the Bank of Ireland, has been receiving a lot of attention from ratings agencies over the past year. The economic and sovereign debt troubles of the Irish economy and the links to the deal via the Bank of Ireland have seen […]

The New Zealand Earthquake Commission (NZ EQC) has failed to renew any of its multi-year reinsurance contracts and has had to replace them with annual contracts instead. Since the damaging earthquakes in Christchurch it has been difficult for many to secure enough cover to replace expiring re/insurance. The ECQ has replaced all of its cover […]