Archive for August, 2011

Aon Benfield Securities have today published their latest annual report on the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market titled ‘Consistency & Confidence‘. The report looks at the market over the twelve month period ending 30th June 2011 and examines how the market has performed and any emerging trends in the deals that have been issued.

We’ve spoken with a number of fund managers in the last two days to gauge their opinions as to their funds exposure to losses due to the impact of hurricane Irene. Irene, was the first hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic Hurricane Season and struck the U.S. coast at North Carolina before impacting New York, New […]

The private insurance market and the capital markets can help state governments finance themselves for disasters and other large insurance type claims, says a report from reinsurer Swiss Re. The latest Sigma study from Swiss Re discusses ‘State involvement in insurance markets‘ and while it identifies the areas where the state or government has to […]

Tropical storm Katia is currently in the mid-Atlantic with maximum sustained windspeeds of 65mph. A fairly large storm already, with tropical storm windspeeds extending up to 85 miles from the centre, Katia is forecast to become a hurricane within the next few hours. It’s likely that the next advisory from the National Hurricane Centre will […]

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has published a report discussing the impact of hurricane Irene to re/insurers. They conclude that Irene will have a limited impact to re/insurers but as part of the overall losses suffered this year Irene is likely to play a part in the continuing upward pressure on rates. Whether that pressure […]

Risk modelling firm AIR Worldwide have released an estimate for insured losses to U.S. onshore properties from hurricane Irene. They expect the final bill to be somewhere in the $3 billion to $6 billion range for re/insurers. This estimate includes wind and storm surge damage to onshore residential, commercial and industrial properties and their contents, […]

In this video from Bloomberg, Emannuel Modu, managing director and head of structured finance at rating agency A.M. Best discusses the outlook for catastrophe bonds and their usefulness as an investment opportunity. He says that catastrophe bonds offer great returns but also can present great risks.

While hurricane Irene resulted in losses and damages in six of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) member countries (Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, the Bahamas, Haiti, St. Kitts & Nevis and the Turks & Caicos Islands), the damages were not severe enough to trigger any payments under the terms of their CCRIF policies. The […]

It’s two weeks since we last looked at the Swiss Re Cat Bond Performance Indices, so it’s time to see how their performance reflected the mood and state of the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities market over the last fortnight. As expected, both the price and total return indices have suffered a significant drop as […]

Hurricane Irene weakened sufficiently both prior to landfall in North Carolina and as she moved up the U.S. coastline to significantly reduce the potential for insured losses from the storm. Early estimates from risk modelling firms EQECAT and Kinetic Analysis both suggest that insured losses of up to a maximum of $3 billion will be […]