Archive for August, 2011

Mayer Brown, one of the worlds leading law firms providing services to the insurance-linked securities sector, have issued a press release on their role in the recent $150m securitization of earthquake risk by the California Earthquake Authority (CEA) through their Embarcadero Re Ltd. Bermuda domiciled reinsurer. This ground-breaking deal completed recently to much interest from […]

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) have issued a press release regarding their involvement in the recently completed Vita Capital IV Ltd. mortality risk catastrophe bond issued on behalf of Swiss Re. It contains a little more detail on the risk modelling tools used to get the transaction to market which we thought would interest our readers. […]

In late July Azimut Holding SpA, an Italian independent asset manager, acquired a 50% stake in Swiss based Katarsis Capital Advisors SA, a financial advisor focused on the insurance-linked securities market. Katarsis Capital works in both the catastrophe investment arena and life linked securities and own a Luxembourg based fund manager Eskatos Capital Management.

Swiss Re have now published a press release on the completion of their latest catastrophe bond transaction so we felt it worth publishing some of their comments on the transaction. The latest Vital Capital IV Ltd. issuance closed earlier this week, as we wrote here, and secured them $180m of cover for mortality events such […]

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s say that the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market has coped well with the turbulent catastrophic events and market impacting incidents seen in the first half of the year.

Aon Benfield’s catastrophe model development arm Impact Forecasting, have published their July 2011 Monthly Cat Recap report which looks at the natural catastrophes that occurred over the course of the month around the world.

Reuters reports today that the chief executive of Catlin, one of the largest syndicates at Lloyd’s, Stephen Catlin, suggested that they could seek to raise up to $500m to take advantage of the trend for rising catastrophe insurance prices after the heavy toll of disasters so far this year.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC) have updated their hurricane forecast and have increased the number of storms that they predict to form over the course of the rest of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season.

Swiss Re have successfully closed the latest in their Vita series of mortality catastrophe bond deals and the two tranches have received their official ratings today. The transaction, which has been issued by their Vita Capital IV Ltd. Cayman Islands domiciled SPV, began marketing in mid-July seeking to secure $100m of cover under the mortality catastrophe […]

This Bloomberg video interview is taken from the Washington Post website. The interview is with John Wells, chairman of Leadenhall Capital Partners. In the interview he discusses the diversification opportunities catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities present to investors and issues such as the impact of the heavy catastrophe losses seen this year and the potential […]