Archive for October, 2011

Munich Re have published a press release on the completion of their latest catastrophe bond transaction. As we wrote last week, Queen Street IV Capital Ltd. completed at an upsized $100m las Thursday, securing Munich Re an additional $100m of coverage for certain U.S. hurricane and European windstorm risks. The full press release from Munich […]

We’ve written before suggesting that it may be time for the U.S. government to seek assistance from the private reinsurance and catastrophe bond markets with the significant burden of flooding risk that they assume through the National Flood Insurance Program. It’s thought that the NFIP wouldn’t be able to cope with a major flood catastrophe […]

Risk modeller AIR Worldwide have launched a new crop weather insurance model for China today. The new model is being hailed as the industry’s first Multiple Peril Crop Insurance (MPCI) Model for China and provides a fully probabilistic approach for determining losses to China’s main crops: corn, cotton, rapeseed, rice, soybeans, and wheat.

Last week was peppered with news of catastrophe and weather events once again, as the flooding in Thailand and earthquake in Turkey dominated much of the industries thoughts. The last week also saw a new catastrophe bond issuance from Swiss Re, closure of the latest Munich Re cat bond and discussion of the best reinsurance-linked […]

The Embarcadero Re earthquake catastrophe bond transaction issued by the California Earthquake Authority (CEA) back in August was hailed as a ground-breaking cat bond transaction for a number of reasons. We’ve spoken with the CEA to get some insight into why they utilised a cat bond and where this adds value for them.

Six months after we wrote about the start of discussions in Canada on whether catastrophe bonds would be suitable for transferring the risks of earthquakes in the country, the Canadian Underwriter reports that progress on the initiative is about to be made as the Insurance Bureau of Canada has announced their interest and involvement.

Munich Re’s latest catastrophe bond issuance Queen Street IV Capital Ltd. has closed successfully, providing them with an additional layer of reinsurance protection for certain of their U.S. hurricane and European windstorm risks. The fourth Queen Street cat bond from Munich Re started life as a $75m deal but at close today, according to sources, […]

The options available to investors seeking to access non-correlated returns by investing in insurance and reinsurance linked asset classes which are correlated to catastrophe events and not to the wider financial markets are growing. As different types of reinsurance vehicles emerge and new ways to structure and trigger insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bonds are found, […]

Northern Thailand is currently facing the worst flooding the country has seen for over 50 years due to a period of torrential rains which have been increasing river levels over the last couple of months. More than 360 people have been killed by the rising floodwaters and much of the north of the country has […]

As ever there is a lot of talk in the market about rates, pricing and which way these will go at the 1st January 2012 renewals when a large amount of the worlds reinsurance treaties are renewed. Currently it looks like the trend seen throughout this year will continue, some rises in catastrophe hit regions […]