Archive for July, 2011

Aon Benfield are the latest reinsurance broker to publish a review of the recent 1st July renewals period. The report titled ‘Reinsurance Market Outlook – June & July 2011 Reinsurance Renewals Update‘ looks at the renewals period and assesses where reinsurance rate and premium increases were observed around the world as their clients renewed their […]

Back in April Alterra Capital, the global insurance and reinsurance group, announced that they were forming a new collateralized reinsurance sidecar vehicle aiming to create additional capacity for the property catastrophe retrocessional market at a time when they could profit from market conditions. Now the capital raising is complete and New Point IV has closed […]

The trend for private market placement of catastrophe bonds continues as news emerges of a transaction that has just been completed by Towers Watson Capital Markets (TWCM). They have successfully closed an $11.95m private placement of catastrophe bond notes through what we believe is a Bermuda domiciled special purpose insurer Oak Leaf Re Ltd.

French reinsurer SCOR has announced that the net losses attributable to catastrophes during Q1 2011 have reached a sufficiently high level to trigger a payment under the terms of their natural catastrophe contingent capital facility (which we first wrote about last September). As a result SCOR have issued a €75m drawdown notice under the contingent […]

Frank Nutter, President of the Reinsurance Association of America, has published an opinion piece on the Washington focused website theHill.com. In it he calls again for the National Flood Insurance Program to be reformed and allow the private sector to become the reinsurer and ultimate backstop for the program leaving the taxpayers unburdened.

As the primary catastrophe bond market slowed in June, with only a single cat bond transaction being issued  by Loma Re Ltd., the secondary market continued to be calm and saw insurance-linked securities investors holding onto their positions in response to the lack of new investment opportunities.

Many weather and peril re/insurance pricing decisions have tended to be made based on analysis of historical data rather than on forecasts. Historical data has always been seen as the best way to predict weather trends and assess riskiness of a specific peril in a specific geographic location. Forecasts were seen as too inaccurate and […]

A new study from reinsurer Swiss Re shows that with drought conditions becoming more common in Europe a side effect has been an increase in the incidence of drought induced soil subsidence, resulting in higher levels of property damage. The study suggests that the changing climate will magnify the risk of soil subsidence and a […]

A fortnight ago when we last looked at the Swiss Re Cat Bond Performance Indices, to see how their performance reflected the mood and state of the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities market, we were surprised to see that both indices had remained stable despite a number of ratings actions on cat bonds. There’s been […]

Reinsurance broker Willis Re have also published a report looking at the state of the market at the 1st July renewals. In the Willis Re 1st View Renewals Report they suggest that reinsurers are repositioning themselves for a possible market turn after the heavy losses suffered in the past 16 months.