Archive for September, 2011

Newly proposed regulations from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could change the way certain over-the-counter derivative transactions are treated for taxation purposes. The proposal would generally allow for OTC derivatives which are based on objective non-financial information to qualify as notional principal contracts (NPC’s).

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) have finalised their modelling work to estimate final index values from their Paradex tool for hurricane Irene which hit the U.S. eastern coastline recently. The final Paradex index value is $2.82 billion which is 85% attributed to residential losses.

At the beginning of September we wrote about the latest and also the largest private catastrophe bond transaction, Kizuna Re Ltd. Kizuna Re is a $160m cat bond which provides sponsor Tokio Marine with a source of reinsurance cover for Japanese typhoon risks was issued as an unrated private transaction to a small group of […]

The parties behind the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative microinsurance scheme have committed to expanding the reach of their weather-index insurance products outside of the original pilot country Ethiopia. The initiative involves the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Oxfam America, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Swiss Re provide the […]

Despite a fairly volatile month of trading in the secondary catastrophe bond market during August, market prices continue to reflect strong investor interest in the asset class according to investment manager Clariden Leu in their latest monthly fund managers report. They say that secondary cat bond trading was slow at the start of the month […]

Many of our readers were in Monte Carlo last week attending the Rendez-Vous de Septembre reinsurance meetings. As a result many of you will have missed some of our more recent articles. Here, to give our readers a chance to catch up on any news they have missed, are the top ten most read stories […]

Just when you think the insurance-linked securities market can’t get any more interesting and innovative, a deal comes along which breaks new ground and brings a new type of risk to insurance-linked securities investors. Artemis.bm can reveal a groundbreaking deal which has recently been completed providing the sponsor with cover for exceptional jackpot winnings in […]

The market for longevity risk trading, which many say has huge potential, could use exchange traded funds (ETF’s) as a trading mechanism once the market has enough liquidity, according to this article from IPE.com. When that liquidity will come is a question that the subject of the article Deutsche Börse would like to have answered.

Aon Benfield Securities recently published a comprehensive report looking at the catastrophe bond market in the year up to 30th June 2011 (our previous articles on this report here and here). The report contained some excellent visualisations demonstrating the size of the catastrophe bond market over time since 2001. There is always discussion about the […]

CATCo Investment Management have published their latest monthly insight for the CATCo Reinsurance Opportunities Fund. The report shows that as the risk period for US wind seasonality expires, significant returns can be generated from their portfolio, such as those demonstrated in August. We spoke with CATCo to better understand this.