Archive for August, 2011

Weather conditions are making it increasingly difficult to forecast how powerful hurricane Irene will get and the direction she will head in towards the U.S. coastline. The forecast path of hurricane Irene predicted by the models has shifted slightly further east, showing a landfall late Saturday afternoon somewhere between Wilmington and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina […]

Update: EQECAT puts expected insured losses from this event at  less than $100m. An earthquake measuring M5.9 on the Richter scale has struck in the U.S. state of Virginia. The quake’s epicenter was located approximately 9 miles from a town called Mineral at a depth of approximately 3.7 miles. As yet we have no reports […]

Hurricane Irene continues to make her way across the Caribbean showing no sign of decreasing in size or strength. In fact just the opposite, hurricane Irene looks set to intensify further and grow in size as she crosses the warm waters of the northern Caribbean heading straight for the Turks & Caicos islands and the […]

The weather risk management market is maturing as the methods used to hedge and trade the weather evolve into tools which address new types of risk and attempt to mitigate the effects of a changing climate. The Weather Risk Management Association (WRMA) has been at the core of the market since its launch in 1999, […]

The Bermuda Monetary Authority has announced that it has seen an increase in the number of registrations of insurance companies on the island. Overall insurer registrations are 30% higher so far this year than were seen for during all of 2010. In particular the BMA are pleased with the increase in registrations of Special Purpose […]

Pension Corporation continues to be one of the most active participants in the pension risk transfer and de-risking marketplace as they complete regular transactions with counterparties. Their latest transaction see’s them enter into a pension buyout agreement with Nova Chemicals UK Pension Plan (press release available here).

Update: Hurricane Irene has now become a strong Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 100mph and higher gusts. Forecasts now show Irene strengthening further to a Category 3 storm with winds of up to 125mph by the time the storm passes through the Bahamas and could make Category 4 with 135mph winds after […]

ITV plc, a British television broadcaster, has announced that it has entered into a £1.7 billion longevity swap with Credit Suisse to remove the risks associated with increases in pension liabilities due to longer than expected life spans of members of their defined benefit pension scheme. Towers Watson advised the ITV Pension Scheme on the […]

It’s been another busy week of news in the markets we cover, with many new articles on a variety of risk transfer related topics. Here, to give readers a chance to catch up on any news they have missed, are the top ten most read stories of the last seven days. The topic which received […]

Torus and Montpelier Reinsurance have entered into an agreement which will see Torus sell the renewal rights to its property catastrophe reinsurance book of business to Montpelier Re with immediate effect. Torus will continue to participate in the catastrophe reinsurance space but purely as a sidecar providing capacity to Montpelier Re.