Archive for April, 2012

Smaller firms are expressing  more interest in retaining their own risk and a growing interest in alternative risk transfer vehicles such as captive structures, special purpose vehicles and risk retention groups, according to broker Marsh’s 2012 Captive Benchmarking Report. We don’t cover this type of alternative risk transfer on Artemis very often, but any trend […]

Aon Benfield Securities, the investment banking of reinsurance broker Aon Benfield, have today published their report which looks back at the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market during the first quarter of 2012. In the report they review all of the transactions which came to market, and some which began marketing, during the quarter which […]

The UK’s Royal County of Berkshire pension fund, who completed their first longevity hedge with Swiss Re back in December 2009, are looking to repeat the experience and have issued a request for proposals for a second longevity hedge. The 2009 transaction was the first time a public sector pension fund had looked to hedge […]

Tropical Storm Risk, a research group backed by Aon Benfield, RSA and Crawford & Company, has published its April forecast for the forthcoming 2012 Atlantic hurricane season. Based on climate signals they suggest that the 2012 hurricane season will see activity levels slightly below average and significantly below what we’ve seen in recent years.

AIR Worldwide has announced that they have expanded their suite of Catastrophe Risk Engineering (CRE) solutions to add the ability to better quantify, mitigate, and manage the risk associated with the impact of catastrophes on supply chain networks. Supply chain business interruption is a huge insurance risk which was highlighted by catastrophes last year including […]

Another lawyer partner with experience in the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond space has left Dewey & LeBoeuf for competitor Meyer Brown. Richard Spitzer joins Mayer Brown’s New York office as a partner in the Insurance Finance Group and the Banking & Finance practice. He joins a colleague Stephen Rooney who left Dewey for Mayer […]

A new set of laws has the potential to impact the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities market by easing some of the current restrictions on securities advertising, marketing and issuance. The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, or JOBS Act, was signed into law by President Obama on the 5th April and contains a number of […]

Institutional investors are increasingly looking at the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market as they consider allocating funds to the sector in a search for attractive returns and portfolio diversification opportunities, says the latest report on Insurance Linked Securities (ILS) by independent publisher Clear Path Analysis. The report contains insight from pension, endowment, asset management […]

Northill Capital LLP, an investment business who provide equity or seed capital to high quality start-up or early stage investment managers has acquired a controlling interest in London based insurance-linked securities investment fund manager Securis Investment Partners. It’s the first large acquisition by Northill Capital and see’s them buy out original Securis investors Swiss Re […]

It’s been another busy week for news in the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities market. Thoughts at this time of year turn to the impending U.S. hurricane season and the mid-year renewals shortly after. No new cat bond deals began marketing in the last seven days, but investors continue to discuss what they see as […]