Archive for July, 2012

The California Earthquake Authority (CEA) are in the process of bringing their third catastrophe bond deal to market through the Embarcadero Re Ltd. transformer vehicle. The latest deal in the cat bond market in Q3, Embarcadero Re Ltd. (Series 2012-2), will issue a single tranche of Class A notes to be sold to investors which are […]

Just how uncorrelated catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities are with the wider financial markets is a point worth considering. We’re currently living in a time of unprecedented financial and economic upheaval due to the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis and U.S. economic issues, with many countries now officially in deepening recessions and the very real spectre […]

Just how risky the outstanding catastrophe bond market is at any one point in time depends on many factors. Different catastrophe bond transactions have different risk factors and some are clearly a riskier investment opportunity than others. There are a number of metrics that help investors identify how risky, or liable to be triggered, a […]

The latest Q2 insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market report to be published comes from Aon Benfield Securities, the investment banking division of reinsurance broker Aon Benfield. The numbers in the report tally with our Deal Directory number of $2.1 billion of issuance in the quarter bringing the half-year total to approximately $3.6 billion. Aon […]

Fitch Ratings has reaffirmed the ratings of Signum Finance Cayman Ltd. Series 2010-09, a life securitization type transaction which provides Goldman Sachs with a mortality hedge for a defined block of life insurance. The latest assessment was based on two factors; the rating of issuer Goldman Sachs, as guarantor to the deals swap counterparty Goldman […]

As we wrote recently, Swiss Re are marketing the sixth issuance in their series of Vita mortality-linked catastrophe bond (or insurance-linked security) deals. The transaction, Vita Capital V Ltd. , which has been marketing for two weeks began as a $100m deal split into two tranches of mortality-linked notes according to the rating documentation and […]

In this article we refer to some more data graphs found in the recent insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market report published by Willis Capital Markets & Advisory (WCMA). We first covered the report in this article here and then followed up with a piece posted earlier on the markets issuance volume and capacity. Now […]

An initiative established under the Dodd-Frank Act by the U.S. Treasury to look at systemic risks and financial stability, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), has just completed a study of contingent capital solutions to see if they are tools which could be leveraged to ward off financial crisis. The FSOC, which is charged with […]

Yesterday we wrote our first article about the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market report published by Willis Capital Markets & Advisory (WCMA), the capital market division of global broker Willis. The report covers the cat bond and ILS markets issuance from Q2 of 2012 as well as providing insight into other areas of the […]

The latest report on the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market in the second-quarter to emerge comes from Willis Capital Markets & Advisory (WCMA), the capital market divison of global broker Willis. The report looks back at issuance in Q2 2012, comments on specific deals and gives some insight into the secondary market. In the […]