Archive for December, 2011

The Cayman Islands are to amend their insurance legislation in an attempt to attract more reinsurance business to the islands. The Caymans are a popular domicile for hedge funds, banks, captives and re/insurers as well as being the domicile home to many insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond special purpose vehicles.

Some details have emerged, via the Japanese press, of a much discussed Asia disaster insurance facility which has been widely expected to emerge for over a year. The Japanese government say that they plan to work with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to establish a disaster insurance facility for the Asia-Pacific region to […]

It’s time for another of our fortnightly looks at the Swiss Re Cat Bond Performance Indices to see how they have performed and what their movement can tell us about the mood and sentiment within the insurance-linked securities market. Last time we looked at the indices it was evident that the full impact of the […]

After another busy week of news in the market here’s your Monday morning chance to catch up. The catastrophe bond market has been busy again this week with new deals completing, other cat bonds still marketing and investors still coming to terms with another loss in the form of Mariah Re 2010-1. If you missed […]

National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh, a subsidiary of Chartis, has completed their Compass Re Ltd. catastrophe bond and the notes have been approved for listing on the Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX). The deal features three classes of Series 2011-1 notes issued by Compass Re to provide National Union Fire Insurance Co. with a source […]

The recently closed, privately placed latest catastrophe bond from USAA has now been admitted to listing by the Cayman Islands Stock Exchange so the deal has definitely closed. The Residential Reinsurance 2011 Ltd. Series 2011-2 cat bond completed at $150m after having been privately placed and remaining unrated, something USAA have tended to do with […]

The confusion around whether the Nelson Re catastrophe bond from Glacier Re is going to make a payout to investors continues after the deal was extended again a couple of days ago. This document from the Cayman Islands Stock Exchange shows that an extension notice was submitted on the 28th November, extending the deal until […]

Another Atlantic tropical storm & hurricane season comes to an end. The 2011 hurricane season has been one of the most active on record as far as storm formation in the Atlantic basin goes, but one of the lower impact seasons as far as U.S. landfalling storms and actual losses goes. That continues the trend […]

The recent total loss of the two $100m tranches of Mariah Re Ltd. catastrophe bonds could make issuing severe thunderstorm only cat bonds more difficult, suggests A.M. Best managing senior financial analyst Asha Attoh-Okine in this article. Mariah Re was the first cat bond which was solely exposed to severe thunderstorms, which includes convective storms […]