Archive for August, 2011

A new country level study on the economic exposure to natural disasters from risk analysis and mapping firm Maplecroft, suggests that while the U.S. and Japan have the highest economic exposure to natural hazards, it is actually the emerging economies of China, India, Philippines and Indonesia that pose the greatest threat to investors due to […]

Fitch Ratings have published an updated version of their rating criteria for insurance-linked securities transactions including catastrophe bonds. The new rating criteria replaces three existing Fitch reports which covered the sector, the ‘Insurance-Linked Securities Rating Criteria (Global)’ issued on Feb. 4, 2008; ‘Catastrophe Bonds Rating Criteria’ issued on March 11, 2008; and ‘Life Insurance Reserve […]

Environmental Finance, the monthly magazine covering the impact of environmental issues on lending, insurance, investment and trading decisions, have published an interesting news article on the weather derivatives market today. The article shows that the recent hot weather across the U.S., which resulted in the fourth warmest July on record, has impacted weather derivatives trading […]

Weather forecaster Accuweather say that the conditions in the Atlantic basin are becoming conducive to tropical storm formation and that we can expect to see a number of named tropical storms form in the near future. The next week, they say, will contain a minimal threat of hurricane landfall to the U.S., but after the […]

As some of our readers will remember we have written previously about the potential application of insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond type structures to cover oil spill risks and liabilities. We’ve spoken with some market participants about this idea and will be publishing the feedback we receive. Our first response was from Peter Nakada, Managing […]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been seeking to bring proposed rules into force regarding new shelf eligibility requirements for asset-backed securities (ABS). The proposed rules seek to enforce greater accountability and enhanced quality around ABS when an issuer uses a shelf registration process.

A study due to be released later this year suggests that thanks to rising sea levels the area of flood plains in the U.S. is likely to increase by as much as 45% over the next 90 years. The three year study looks at the possible impacts of a changing climate on the federal flood […]

Diversification is becoming a regular theme of many of our articles as investors seek our ways to keep a good mix of perils in their insurance-linked securities portfolios. The catastrophe bond market recently found itself to consist of 71% U.S. hurricane risks, add to that the slow primary issuance and you have a difficult situation […]

The title of this post is taken from ratings agency Moody’s article regarding the CEA’s recent directly issued catastrophe bond, more on that Moody’s article in our piece published earlier today. Moody’s are suggesting that the conditions are right for a large uptick in the volume of catastrophe bond issuance, particularly if there is another […]

Ratings agency Moody’s has commented on the California Earthquake Authority (CEA) issuance of $150m of earthquake risk through their Embarcadero Re Ltd. special purpose reinsurer. The catastrophe bond deal which the CEA completed without the involvement of a traditional reinsurer for the first time could see the CEA rely less on reinsurers services in future.