Archive for August, 2012

Bermuda based CATCo Investment Management, the specialist reinsurance-linked investment business who manage around $2 billion of retrocessional portfolios for their clients, have announced that CATCo Diversified Fund in which the Company invests has closed down its side pocket associated with their New Zealand and Japanese catastrophe exposures. CATCo originally set up the side pocket to […]

The July Global Catastrophe Recap from reinsurance broker Aon Benfield’s catastrophe modelling arm Impact Forecasting shows that the insurance industry will face agriculture losses from weather catastrophes around the world in July. From severe flooding in China, to the extreme drought in the U.S., the weather in July will result in losses to agricultural and […]

Kane, the largest global independent insurance manager in the world and one of the leading providers of insurance-linked securities (ILS) and life, pensions and investment (LPI) administration services has announced a senior promotion and three new appointments within their U.S. operations. The new appointments are on the captive side of Kane’s business but the promotion […]

This year has seen some unusual patterns in the secondary market for insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bonds. The unusual patterns began at the start of the year as mark-to-market losses were a feature which caused consternation for some investors. We then saw prices stabilise as we moved into the second quarter before seeing unseasonal price […]

The potential size of the exposure faced by U.S. residual market property insurers of last resort has risen to new highs as total exposure of these types of insurers nears the $900 billion mark. While these are supposed to be insurers of last resort, the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) says in a recent report that […]

Two upcoming changes to regulatory environments in insurance and banking within Europe are set to increase scrutiny of the sector from those with capital to deploy and could create unmissable opportunities to profit, which may never be seen again, was a conclusion of a roundtable discussion moderated by Opalesque.

In the last two weeks the catastrophe bond price return and total return indices have made steady gains as their return to a more seasonal pattern continues. It’s time for another look at the Swiss Re Cat Bond Performance Indices (our last article here) to see what they can tell us about movements in pricing […]

Here’s our Monday morning recap of the most read articles during the last seven days. The ILS market continues to function well, with two recent deals upsizing and completing in the last week. Embarcadero Re Ltd. (Series 2012-2) and Vita Capital V Ltd. both provide further evidence of the huge appetite for insurance risk that […]

PensionsFirst Capital, a wholly owned subsidiary of PensionsFirst Group, who offer pension risk transfer solutions to major UK companies in the management and derisking of their defined benefit pension schemes, have announced the appointment of a new CEO. Ex-Credit Suisse Fixed Income MD, Hugo James, has joined PensionsFirst Capital as CEO to lead the company’s drive […]

The London office of law firm Sidley Austin LLP acted as a legal adviser to global reinsurer Munich Re on its recently completed £300m reinsurance deal which saw Munich Re assume £300m of longevity risk from Pension Insurance Corporation. The Sidley team was led by the head of the London insurance team, Martin Membery, and […]