Archive for May, 2013

Further details have become available on another of the catastrophe bonds that launched recently. The Blue Danube II Ltd. (Series 2013-1) cat bond, sponsored by German insurer Allianz who is looking for multi-peril and multi-region reinsurance protection for certain hurricane and earthquake risks, has now had its preliminary rating applied by Standard & Poor’s. We’re […]

The latest catastrophe bond from U.S. primary insurer Allstate has something very unique about it. The Sanders Re Ltd. (Series 2013-1) issuance, through which Allstate hopes to secure at least $350m of reinsurance cover for U.S. hurricane and earthquake risks, features a trigger design that we’ve never seen before and we understand that this is […]

Florida Senate bill SB 1770, which we’ve tracked due to the inclusion of statute 627.352 which would have brought into law, as the bill says, ‘Creating the Catastrophe Risk Capital Access Facility to facilitate insurer access to global risk capital markets and risk-transfer mechanisms’, appears to have dropped the measure we were so interested in. […]

Blue Capital Management, the third-party capital and reinsurance-linked fund management arm of Bermuda based reinsurer Montpelier Re, has been raising new funds for its flagship listed catastrophe reinsurance and retrocessional linked investment fund Blue Capital Global Reinsurance Fund Limited. The fund launched a prospectus in April for the first of a series of placing’s of new […]

Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a leading provide of catastrophe risk modelling and analysis products and services, has announced today that it has provided the risk analysis for $1.2 billion of catastrophe bond issuance in 2013 so far. This includes two recently closed transactions which both increased in size significantly and were well received by investors; […]

Aon Benfield Securities, the investment banking division of global reinsurance broker Aon Benfield has just announced two new senior strategic advisory hires to its capital markets team. Robert V. James and Michael A. Pedraja join the division as Managing Directors, will be based in Chicago and will both report directly to Paul Schultz, Chief Executive […]

The Armor Re Ltd. (Series 2013-1) catastrophe bond, which we wrote about when it launched earlier this week here, has now received its preliminary rating from Standard & Poor’s and so more detail on the transaction is now available to us. The Armor Re deal sees a first-time cat bond sponsor, American Coastal Insurance Company, […]

The smallest longevity swap deal that we’ve seen has been completed, according to an article on Professional Pensions today. The £400m longevity risk transfer deal hedges the risk of pensioners living longer for luxury car manufacturer Bentley’s UK pension scheme. The size of the deal shows that longevity swaps can be transacted for smaller pension […]

Insurance and reinsurance group Lancashire Holdings announced its first-quarter 2013 earnings today, revealing what looks like a decent quarter helped by a lack of catastrophe losses achieving particularly strong return on equity compared to a year earlier. CEO Richard Brindle mentioned the impact of third-party capital inflows on the reinsurance marketplace, but stated that Lancashire is […]

Markel Corporation has announced today the completion of its acquisition of insurance and reinsurance group Alterra Capital Holdings after all regulatory approvals were received and votes cast in favour of the transaction by the two firms shareholders. Markel has now gained access to a major reinsurance and large-account insurance business. It also gains collateralized reinsurance […]