Archive for August, 2012

Prime Management Limited, a Bermuda headquartered independent provider of fund administration services to onshore and offshore hedge funds with a focus on insurance-linked securities, has been recognised for its services to the ILS market. In the annual Global Custodian Hedge Fund Administration Survey, Prime Management achieved an overall score of 6.79 out of 7 and […]

The last two weeks has seen a strong jump in the value of the outstanding catastrophe bond price return index as seasonal effects of the hurricane season have yet to seriously impact price returns. It’s time for our regular look at the Swiss Re Cat Bond Performance Indices (our last article here) to see what […]

It’s been another busy week for news in the markets we cover. Many of our readers have been taking vacations over the summer period so we hope these recaps are proving useful. Visit this page where you can read all of our previous Monday morning catch-ups to find any stories you may have missed. Of […]

CATCo Investment Management, the specialist Bermuda based reinsurance-linked investment business who manage around $2 billion of retrocessional portfolios for their clients, have announced that the net asset value of the CATCo Reinsurance Opportunities Fund increased by around 5.3% from $339.8m to $357.9m during the first six months of 2012. The positive performance reflects the gain […]

Our readers are well aware that catastrophe bonds are a hot asset class at the moment, with growing interest being shown from an expanding spectrum of investors, and a growing market thanks to high levels of issuance in 2012. As an asset they offer an extremely attractive source of returns to investors, generally ranging between […]

Scottish Re’s 2006 Ballantyne Re life insurance securitization transaction has been heading for what seems like an inevitable default for some time now. The Regulation XXX type life insurance linked transaction saw huge mark-to-market losses on the assets in the underlying collateral accounts. As a result it experienced regular failures to make interest payments resulting […]

The economies of countries such as Bangladesh, Philippines, Myanmar, India and Viet Nam are among the most exposed economically to the impacts of natural disasters and weather or climate catastrophes, according to the second Natural Hazards Risk Atlas published by risk analysis and mapping firm Maplecroft.

July saw activity in the secondary market for catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities slow down somewhat compared to the prior few months which had seen heightened activity and strong, if somewhat unseasonal price rises. The pattern displayed by price return indices of outstanding catastrophe bonds became much more stable, exhibiting more seasonally expected trends, but […]

Participation in the insurance-linked security (ILS) and catastrophe bond markets is on the increase from a segment of the investment world which rating agency A.M. Best terms ‘non-specialist investors’. These large, institutional and capital market investors, include entities such as pension funds and mutual funds and they have been steadily increasing allocations to the ILS […]

Bermuda based, hedge fund backed, reinsurer Third Point Reinsurance Company has made two new appointments of well-respected figures from the Bermuda reinsurance market, we can reveal. We heard rumours of these two hires last week and have had the appointments confirmed by Third Point Re.