Archive for January, 2013

Back in December we wrote that reinsurer Swiss Re had planned to redeem two tranches of mortality catastrophe bond notes issued through its Vita Capital IV Ltd. vehicle. It turns out we’d jumped the gun on one of those and according to a clarification published by rating agency S&P the $75m Series I Class E […]

Demonstrating the insurance-linked security and reinsurance-linked investment markets resilience to bounce back from events of the magnitude of hurricane Sandy, the average ILS fund returned, as measured by the Eurekahedge ILS Advisers Index, a very impressive 1% in December. This made December the second best monthly return performance of the ILS Advisers ILS fund tracking […]

The last seven days saw one of the biggest news stories of the reinsurance-linked investment markets relatively short history as 25% of ILS investment manager Nephila Capital was sold to private equity firm KKR. As always, you can read every market news story and article on the Artemis news blog, subscribe to our weekly email […]

Credit Suisse has issued an updated event report on hurricane Sandy in regards to the storms expected impact to the asset managers CS IRIS Low Volatility Plus fund, and as a result the DCG Iris ILS fund for which CS Iris is the master fund. Credit Suisse has increased its estimate of the insured industry […]

According to Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, global crop insurance claims in 2012 reached a massive $23 billion. Munich Re attributes as much as $15 billion of these losses in the U.S. due to the severe drought in 2012. Crop losses are growing with increasing insurance penetration and in years to come these figures […]

Reinsurance broker Aon Benfield’s catastrophe model development arm Impact Forecasting released its latest annual study of catastrophe events and the resulting economic and insured losses yesterday. The Annual Global Climate and Catastrophe Report looks back at the disasters of 2012 and provides statistics and analysis on the year versus prior loss years. Hurricane Sandy, unsurprisingly, […]

In a news article published yesterday, rating agency A.M. Best highlight the investment-side risk that comes with the hedge fund backed reinsurer strategy which has been becoming more popular in recent years. These reinsurers, backed by large hedge funds, typically try to access the premium income available in the reinsurance market as a source of […]

The first insurance-linked security transaction to come to market in 2013 has now completed successfully. The Vitality Re IV Ltd. (Series 2013-1) medical benefit linked securitization provides health insurer Aetna with a $150m four-year source of fully-collateralized excess of loss reinsurance coverage on a portion of its group commercial health insurance business.

Further details have emerged on the new disaster insurance facility which launched last week to provide parametric insurance cover for tropical cyclone and earthquake risks to a group of Pacific Islands. The parametric catastrophe facility has been set up by the World Bank and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment […]

If you wanted evidence to demonstrate just how popular the insurance-linked investment universe is currently, the news which broke late yesterday that the largest investment manager in the ILS sector, Nephila Capital, is selling 24.9% of its business to private equity and buyout giant KKR & Co. L.P. (or Kohlberg Kravis Roberts), should really bring […]