Archive for April, 2012

It’s been another busy week of news in the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market. Our article which revealed the $750m size of Florida Citizens Everglades Re Ltd. cat bond has become one of our most read articles ever, having been read well over 1,500 times in less than a week. There was also news […]

The recent report on longevity risk from the IMF highlighted that the exposure is likely being severely underestimated and that globally longevity risk amounts to tens of trillions of dollars of exposure which is not currently being managed. The amount of longevity exposure in pension funds around the world is significantly larger than the capacity […]

A new insurance-linked securities fund vehicle called DCG Iris is to launch in June. It will be listed on the London stock exchange as a kind of feeder-fund for Credit Suisse, according to reports in the financial press.

The IFC (International Finance Corporation), part of the World Bank Group, has partnered with micro-insurance company SANASA Insurance to pilot affordable, index-based weather insurance products to farmers in Sri Lanka to help minimise the impact of crop losses due to flooding or drought. It’s another example of index-based insurance products being used to bring insurance […]

Swiss Re’s latest catastrophe bond which is still in the marketing phase to investors is due to issue $400m of notes across the three tranches which we wrote about recently here. At the time of that article it was only clear that the Mythen Ltd. cat bond would secure at least $150m of cover for […]

Opportunities for pension schemes who are looking to transfer longevity risks through the use of instruments such as longevity swaps or annuities, could become closed off due to the Eurozone crisis, according to a new report from Towers Watson. The report which details the results of a survey of several major providers –  insurance companies […]

U.S. insurer Chubb Group announced their first quarter results for 2012 on the 19th April and held an earnings conference call where the senior management team discussed key highlights of the last three months. One of those highlights was the successful issuance of Chubb’s fifth catastrophe bond transaction, East Lane Re V Ltd., and CFO […]

Deutsche Bank have been awarded for their work as a hedge fund administrator at the Hedge Funds World Middle East conference as part of its Middle East Awards 2012 Ceremony. Deutsche Bank’s Alternative Fund Services business won the ‘Best Fund Administrator’ award which is judged based on diversification of products and services, approach to back […]

Marsh & McLennan Companies, one of the largest professional service firms dealing in risk and insurance broking and consultancy, has acquired a minority stake in Bermuda based catastrophe, insurance-linked securities and reinsurance-linked investment manager Juniperus Capital. Juniperus Capital recently sold a majority holding to private-equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners (our article on that acquisition can […]

The BBC, or British Broadcasting Corporation, pension fund made a £76m allocation to insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bonds through an investment mandate given to Nephila Capital las year (read our article on the original allocation of funds here). While the investment is small, at less than 1% of the BBC pension funds total assets of […]