Archive for August, 2012

The Combine Re Ltd. (Series 2012-1) catastrophe bond, which was sponsored by Swiss Re America but provides cover for two reinsured parties Country Mutual Insurance Company and the North Carolina Farm Bureau’s mutual insurance arm, has become the latest cat bond to suffer losses. According to a report from rating agency Moody’s, one tranche of […]

Pension plans and schemes are increasingly looking at their ability to fund their obligations to pensioners as their returns fall due to the wider economic and financial market issues and their pensioners live longer meaning they are on the hook for more payments than expected. This scenario is leading pension plans to look to ways […]

It’s earnings season in the insurance and reinsurance markets and many companies have been holding half-year earnings calls during which their senior executives answer questions from analysts on company performance and the market itself. That means it’s a good time to see what reinsurance company execs are saying about the collateralized and capital market backed […]

As the 2012 Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane season progresses the chances of storms forming and making landfall is rising, according to the latest forecast update from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Their latest forecast which was published at the end of last week raises the number of tropical storms they predict […]

It’s Monday morning again and here’s our post-Olympic catch-up of the most read articles during the last seven days. Many of you have been on vacation in recent weeks so we have left you a simple way to go back and find any important news you may have missed. Visit this page where you can […]

Just two or three weeks ago many insurance publications were suggesting that crop insurance losses resulting from the severe drought in the U.S. would not be large enough to hit the global reinsurance market. We’ve been cautious on this point, as we could see the increasing severity of the drought (the worst in more than […]

Aon Benfield Securities recently published Q2 insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market report included an interview with Elaine Caprio Brady, Vice President and Manager of Ceded Reinsurance at Liberty Mutual Insurance. The interview discusses Liberty Mutual’s use of the insurance-linked securities market as they issued their most recent catastrophe bond, Mystic Re III Ltd. (Series […]

Non-life insurers in Japan have found themselves in a precarious situation as their capital positions have become depleted by massive catastrophe losses in the last year or so. The combined impacts of the March 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami and the flooding in Thailand have seriously depleted catastrophe reserves in the Japanese non-life sector leaving […]

According to the International Labour Organisation micro-insurance alone may not be enough to protect the poor in developing nations from natural disasters and weather related catastrophe events. Where extreme weather events and disasters are concerned the ILO recommends the use of what they have termed meso-insurance or macro-insurance schemes as micro-insurance may be too localised […]

Fitch Ratings has completed a periodic review and published an updated version of its criteria report for rating insurance-linked securities (ILS) including catastrophe bonds. The criteria report was last updated a year ago and Fitch have brought it up to date in terms of data, reflecting any changes to legal structures and/or insurance risks within […]