Archive for July, 2012

The insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market covers a broad universe of risk considering its size of near $15 billion. Having begun with a focus on natural perils, with the first transactions coming to market in 1996/7, the ability to securitize risks and sell the resulting notes to investors, there by effectively transferring the risk […]

An estimate for the insured losses resulting from the Colorado wildfires has been released by the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, a non-profit organisation. The 2012 wildfire season in Colorado has destroyed more than 600 homes now along with significant volumes of personal property. Adjusters continue to assess damages and work with communities to get […]

The first catastrophe bond of the third-quarter, Queen Street VI Re Ltd. a U.S. hurricane and European windstorm cat bond from Munich Re, has now completed successfully, been rated by Standard & Poor’s and listed on the Bermuda Stock Exchange. Munich Re’s sixth Queen Street cat bond deal was slightly unusual as it is rare […]

Psigma Investment Management, a wealth and investment management arm of the much larger Punter Southall Group, have invested in catastrophe bonds for the first time according to this article on Money Marketing. Psigma focus on creating bespoke investment portfolios for private clients and also offer a discretionary managed portfolio management service as well. The investment […]

We’ve written a number of times recently about the unseasonal returns that the outstanding catastrophe bond and insurance-linked security market has been achieving in recent months. The unseasonal price returns demonstrated by cat bond market indices have continued through June and have only begun to slow into the start of July as seasonality in secondary […]

The California Earthquake Authority (CEA) are to return to the catastrophe bond market for the third time in a year to sponsor another transaction through the Embarcadero Re Ltd. transformer vehicle. As we wrote back in May, the CEA governing board approved the issuance of further catastrophe bonds through a transformer reinsurance vehicle. At that […]

CelsiusPro AG, the Swiss-based specialist in structuring and originating weather derivatives and certificates, has teamed up with Allianz Global Assistance to bring weather insurance to travellers to help them hedge against the risks of rainfall on their holidays. It’s another example of weather risk management practices being offered to consumers to help them hedge inclement […]

Ratings agency A.M. Best has revisited the Montana Re Ltd. Series 2009-1 catastrophe bond transaction to assess whether any change to the deals ratings was required. Ratings agencies often do this as cat bonds move closer to maturity and Montana Re is due to mature in December this year. A.M. Best concludes that no ratings […]

It’s been a busy week of news in the ILS, catastrophe bond and reinsurance markets thanks to a number of mid-year reports which have been published. The reports are all positive for further expansion of the capital markets funded risk transfer and reinsurance sectors and observers see continuing interest from major sources of investment capital. […]

Global reinsurer Munich Re has published its half-year report on the natural catastrophe activity experienced around the globe in the first-half of 2012 and how natural catastrophe losses have impacted the insurance and reinsurance market. After a near record year of insured losses in 2011, this year has been subdued by comparison with moderate losses […]