Archive for September, 2013

Blue Capital Management, the third-party capital and reinsurance-linked fund management arm of Bermuda based reinsurer Montpelier Re and manager of the Blue Capital Global Reinsurance Fund Limited, said Friday that it would target up to $100m in its latest capital raising share placement.

Here are the top ten articles as viewed by our readers week ending 22nd September 2013. As always, you can read every market news story and article here on the Artemis news blog, subscribe to our weekly email newsletter updates and for your convenience here are the ten most popular news articles from the last […]

After more than two and a half years the Swiss Re Global Cat Bond Performance Price Return index, which tracks the price return for all outstanding USD denominated cat bonds, has made it back to its highest level since the index plummeted after the Tohoku, Japan earthquake and tsunami.

Not strictly on topic for Artemis, but a major breaking story in the reinsurance market, is the news that Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group plc (JLT) will be the firm to acquire the Towers Watson reinsurance brokerage business for a cash consideration of $250m.

Right now, the challenges posed by alternative reinsurance capital, which has entered the market from external third-party investors, are much greater for reinsurers than for primary insurers, said ratings agency Standard & Poor’s in a report on global multiline insurers.

The secondary market for catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities notes saw typical seasonal activity in August apart from a notable lack of any threat from U.S. hurricanes. Seasonality has seen U.S. wind cat bond spreads tighten, despite the lack of any U.S. wind so far this year.

French reinsurer SCOR recently completed its first non-life Atlas catastrophe bond issuance, the extreme mortality-linked Atlas IX Capital Limited (Series 2013-1). Aon Benfield Securities, the capital markets and investment banking division of the reinsurance broker, structured the deal and acted as a bookrunner.

A new acting head of retrocessional property reinsurance has been hired at Markel Global Reinsurance replacing recently departed Martin Vezina. Greg Richardson, a prior employee of Alterra Capital before Markel acquired the firm, will underwrite retro property reinsurance for Markel and the New Point sidecar.

Partnering with alternative capital, by establishing asset management units, is not enough alone to protect property catastrophe focused reinsurance firms from the competitive effects of third-party reinsurance capital, insurance-linked securities and the capital markets.

One of the issues traditional reinsurance firms are currently wrestling with, in this well-capitalised reinsurance marketplace, is what to do with excess capital when they cannot find enough attractive opportunities to deploy underwriting capacity at a reasonable rate of return.