Archive for February, 2012

SIFMA, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, have sent a comment letter to the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regarding proposed rules for implementing Section 13 of the […]

We’ve had another record week of traffic on Artemis as our audience continues to grow. This reflects the heightened interest in the catastrophe bond, insurance linked security and alternative risk/reinsurance sectors. News in the last week saw another cat bond come to market, East Lane Re V Ltd., and one nearly double in size, Mystic […]

The Mystic Re III Ltd. catastrophe bond, which is the latest cat bond to be sponsored by U.S. insurer Liberty Mutual, is said to have almost doubled in size during its marketing according to sources. We’re told that Mystic Re III, which began marketing as a $150m deal, has now jumped to a $275m cat […]

A piece of U.S. regulation has been highlighted as potentially having an impact on catastrophe bond and insurance-linked security issuing entities. The insight published in this memo from law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP discusses the FATCA provisions (FATCA stands for the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2009), regulation which aims to reduce […]

Lancashire Holdings, the Bermuda and UK based provider of specialty insurance products, has announced that they have secured additional capital allowing them to expand their Accordion Re fully collateralised sidecar reinsurance facility. The Accordion Re sidecar was launched last May and focuses on property catastrophe retrocession. It acts as a quota share reinsurer for the […]

London based insurance-linked investment fund manager Securis Investment Partners has deployed significant capital into non-life risks during the last month. Before the recent capital deployment the Securis 1 Fund was weighted quite heavily towards life risks, but given the more attractive pricing of non-life catastrophe risk after the record losses of 2011, Securis decided to […]

Chubb’s latest foray into the catastrophe bond market, East Lane Re V Ltd. which we uncovered initial information about on Tuesday, received its preliminary rating from Standard & Poor’s yesterday. As such we have more detail on the transaction to share with you. The deal is targeting $125m of indemnity based, fully collateralized risk transfer […]

Weather forecaster Accuweather is predicting another above-average U.S. tornado season for 2012. Last year saw a near record number of tornadoes over the course of the season, with 2011 seeing 1,709 officially recorded tornadoes which was just short of the record of 1,817. The average for the last decade is only 1,300. 2011 also ranks […]

U.S. insurer Chubb Group are returning to the catastrophe bond market to sponsor another of their regular East Lane transactions according to market sources. This will be Chubb’s fifth cat bond, having sponsored four East Lane Re deals previously with the last transaction coming to market last March. East Lane Re V Ltd. is being […]

Over time investors in the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market have become more comfortable with investing in deals with a greater risk profile, says Willis Capital Markets & Advisory in their latest quarterly ILS market report. The latest report, which you can read about and download via the Willis website here, contains an analysis […]