Archive for August, 2013

Expanding the remit of the reinsurance and capital markets convergence arena seems to be high on the list of priorities for Property Claim Services (PCS) at the moment. The latest area of expansion it believes it can help to facilitate is transferring wildfire risks to capital market investors.

The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) is broadening its reach with its first venture into personal insurance products and is supporting trials of a parametric personal weather insurance product designed to pay out to Caribbean residents after a natural disaster strikes.

Fitch Ratings said yesterday that it is keeping its outlook for the global reinsurance sector as stable and expects to affirm the majority of its sector ratings in 2014. This despite a market impacted by falling prices across property catastrophe risks and increasing competition from alternative reinsurance capital.

In a recent report, Goldman Sachs highlights alternative capital in reinsurance as one of eight disruptive themes in business today which it believes has the potential to reshape its sector and command an increasing level of attention from investors over years to come.

Additional details are now available on the first mortality-linked catastrophe bond of the year. Last week we covered the launch of Atlas IX Capital Limited (Series 2013-1) an extreme mortality insurance-linked security sponsored by French reinsurer SCOR to provide it with retrocessional reinsurance protection.

The third-party capital and reinsurance-linked fund management arm of Bermuda based reinsurer Montpelier Re, Blue Capital Management, has published a half yearly report for its flagship listed catastrophe reinsurance linked investment fund, the Blue Capital Global Reinsurance Fund Limited.

ILS Fund Services Ltd., (ILS) a Bermuda licensed specialist in hedge fund administration and valuation services for insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds, has recently exceeded $1 billion of client insurance-linked assets under its administration just 18 months after its launch.

In July insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund returns were depressed by spread tightening across much of the outstanding catastrophe bond market. The result was the lowest average return of ILS funds for the month of July since the Eurekahedge ILS Advisers Index began recording ILS fund performance.

Severe weather in Germany is again impacting insurers and reinsurers in 2013, as two severe hailstorm events in the country look set to create up to $2 billion of losses for insurers. Hail once again proves itself as a major cause of losses for the insurance and reinsurance industry.

Spread tightening on catastrophe bonds exposed to U.S. wind risk has lifted the secondary cat bond market indices in recent weeks. Now deep in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season, typical seasonality has returned to secondary cat bond prices and values have increased on hurricane exposed bonds.