Archive for March, 2013

Bermuda based Horseshoe Group, an independent insurance manager and advisor to insurers, reinsurers, sidecars, transformers and catastrophe bonds, has signed up with Eurobase Insurance Solutions to use its synergy2 software underwriting platform. The synergy2 platform will allow Horseshoe Group to manage both its service company business and its reinsurance type business within a single application.

In this interview series with investment managers from high-profile insurance-linked securities funds, collateralized reinsurance entities and reinsurance-linked investment firms, we hope to reveal a little more detail on the individual manager’s experience and the firm’s specific investment strategy. We begin this series with a chat with Michael Stahel, one of the four partners/portfolio managers of […]

The world’s largest reinsurer Munich Re has published some interesting data and insight into just how much growth the insurance and reinsurance markets will see in the Asia-Pacific region in the future. This is a topic we have written about many times, that as regions of the world develop more rapidly the need for re/insurance […]

The market for longevity hedging, or the offloading of longevity risks via insurance, reinsurance and instruments such as longevity swaps, is set to grow again in 2013 according to the latest report from research firm Clear Path Analysis. The report suggests that 2013 could see record levels of longevity risk moving off the balance sheets […]

With catastrophe bond rates seemingly near all-time lows it’s no surprise to hear that another of the U.S. state based property insurers of last resort plans to assess whether a cat bond could be cheaper than reinsurance at its next renewal. Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, which sponsored its first cat bond Pelican Re Ltd. last […]

Stone Ridge Asset Management, a New York based investment firm launched last year by former Magnatar Capital co-head of portfolio management Ross Stevens, has successfully raised its initial target capital for its two insurance-linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance-linked investment funds, according to SEC documents. The manager launched two reinsurance-linked funds in the last quarter of […]

The catastrophe bond indices which track the price return and total return of the outstanding catastrophe bond market have continued to fluctuate over the last two weeks but a general upwards trend remains. When we looked at these indices two weeks ago, the primary cat bond issuance market was quiet, and the indices had experienced […]

Roll-out has begun for a long-awaited excess rainfall parametric insurance product from the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), the catastrophe risk pooling facility who provide parametric based disaster insurance cover to Caribbean countries. The product has been in development for a number of years but the CCRIF is now in discussion with the donors […]

The issuance market for catastrophe bonds continues to look more active as another new deal came to market in the shape of another transaction for Florida Citizens with Everglades Re Ltd. (Series 2013-1). As always, you can read every market news story and article on the Artemis news blog, subscribe to our weekly email newsletter […]

One of the hot topics at last week’s SIFMA Insurance-and-Risk-Linked Securities (IRLS) conference in New York was the increasing competition that ILS and third-party investor sources of reinsurance capacity are posing to traditional reinsurers. Some opinions suggest that ILS and investor-backed collateralized reinsurance capacity is moving beyond being purely complementary coverage and is becoming ever […]