Archive for June, 2013

The United States saw 11 weather and climate disaster events which each caused losses exceeding $1 billion in 2012, according to data from the NOAA. That makes 2012 the second most costly year in terms of economic damages since 1980, with a total of more than $110 billion of damages over the course of the […]

U.S. specialty insurer Assurant is returning to the catastrophe bond market for what will be its fourth issuance under an Ibis Re named issuer, we understand. The transaction, Ibis Re II Ltd. (Series 2013-1) sees Assurant hoping to secure a multi-year source of fully-collateralized U.S. hurricane protection for certain named subsidiary companies.

In the last few days the news has been awash with discussions of so-called ‘shadow insurance’, discussing the practices of life insurers in using captives and offshore vehicles as sources of reinsurance protection. A report published on Tuesday called out certain practices by life insurers as overly risky to both policyholders and taxpayers.

We now have further details for you on the recently launched Green Fields II Capital Ltd. (Series 2013-1) catastrophe transaction. The Green Fields II Capital cat bond sees French insurer Groupama looking to utilise the capital markets to source an expanded and extended source of French windstorm reinsurance coverage.

On Tuesday 11th June, executives from Bermuda based reinsurance company RenaissanceRe presented at the Morgan Stanley Financials Conference. As you would expect, given the recent focus on third-party reinsurance capital and its impact on catastrophe reinsurance rates, the RenRe executives spoke at some length about the firms use of alternative sources of capital.

Swiss based specialist insurance and reinsurance-linked investment manager Twelve Capital has agreed a transaction with Falcon Private Bank, a boutique Swiss weather manager, which will see Twelve Capital take on the management of the Falcon insurance-linked securities (ILS) business and investment funds.

An analysts report from Numis Securities, which discusses softening property catastrophe reinsurance rates and the impact this is having on London market underwriters, suggests that the influence of capital market capacity and the availability of cheaper insurance-linked securities (ILS) products will end the golden era for property catastrophe margins.

The price return of the secondary catastrophe bond market continues to slide slowly down from its recent peak now that supply and demand for outstanding catastrophe bond notes appears to have levelled off somewhat. A combination of returning seasonality and a levelling off of supply and demand dynamics has seen the index we track decline […]

Fitch Ratings has said in an update that it expects the recent European flooding, which hit Central Europe particularly hard, may cause insured losses of €3 billion in Germany alone. In the update published yesterday 11th June, Fitch said it expects the floods in Europe this year will be even more costly than the 2002 […]

Bermuda based global insurance and reinsurance group AXIS Capital Holdings Ltd. has been busy launching new initiatives in recent days. First it announced the launch of its third-party capital and capital markets initiative last week and now this week it has announced a new Weather and Commodity Markets unit.