Archive for September, 2012

This year has seen extremely high levels of interest in the reinsurance linked investments space from large institutional investors such as pension funds, mutual funds and sovereign wealth funds. We can attest to this as we see a growing proportion of our audience coming from these and other classes of investor. A significant amount of […]

There are a number of theories as to why we didn’t see a group of new reinsurers start-up after the record natural catastrophe losses suffered by the industry in 2011. Some say reinsurance capacity was sufficient, others say that the losses were not sufficiently impactful to push rates to the point where profitable opportunities emerged. […]

In an article published by Fitch Ratings their director of insurance Martyn Street says that hedge fund backed reinsurers may find achieving their goals, of “using stable premium flows in lower-risk underwriting business to support higher returns on the companies’ asset portfolios” a challenge. As simple as the hedge fund reinsurer business model sounds, there […]

The UK’s Met Office, the national weather forecaster and data provider, have launched a new service called Site Wind Index which will offer 30 years of climatology data detailing hourly wind speeds for customer defined sites and heights which is updated monthly and annually. The idea behind the service is to facilitate creation of insurance […]

The August Global Catastrophe Recap, from Aon Benfield’s catastrophe modelling arm Impact Forecasting, shows that there is considerable disparity between insurance penetration levels around the globe. The low amount of insured losses in some catastrophe events around the world demonstrates where growth should be expected and where there is an opportunity for insurers and reinsurers […]

It transpires that the losses caused by hurricane Isaac have had an impact on an outstanding catastrophe bond. According to rating agency Moody’s, losses from Isaac have qualified under the terms of the Combine Re Ltd. (Series 2012-1) cat bond transaction. While these losses are insufficient to cause direct principal losses, they will further erode the […]

Reinsurer Tokio Millennium Re Ltd. has today signalled their intention to become more deeply involved in the collateralized reinsurance, insurance-linked securities, capital markets and insurance management space, with the announcement of the formation of two new corporations. The two new firms are Tokio Solution Management Ltd. (TSM), an insurance management company, and Shima Reinsurance Ltd. […]

One of the big talking points over the last two years in the reinsurance market has been, so called, ‘cold spot’ catastrophe losses and growing re/insurance exposures in emerging markets of the world. At this weeks Monte Carlo Rendez-vous this topic has received a lot of attention as re/insurers struggle to understand their own exposures […]

Catastrophe bond market issuance is typically slow during the peak months of the U.S. hurricane season and 2012 has been no different. August saw no cat bonds complete during the month and just the one, Eurus III Ltd., which began marketing but completes this week. When primary issuance of cat bonds is low, sometimes the […]

PERILS AG, the Zurich-based independent provider of industry-wide European catastrophe insurance data and loss indices, has announced a new initiative which will see PERILS team up with the European Space Agency (ESA) to make available satellite-based flood footprint imagery during and after major European flood events.