Archive for January, 2014

You can read every market news story and article here on the Artemis news blog. For your convenience here are the ten most popular news articles from the last seven days, week ending 5th January 2014, on Artemis. Subscribe to the weekly email newsletter updates.

Ratings agency A.M. Best interviewed Denis Kessler, the chief executive officer of French reinsurance company SCOR recently for its BestDay Audio Podcast. Amongst other topics, Kessler discussed catastrophe bonds as capital protection tool.

The total return of the outstanding catastrophe bond market in 2013 has beaten the long-term average for the second year running, with the 2013 total return reaching a very healthy 10.9%, as measured by the Swiss Re Global Cat Bond Performance Total Return index.

The Board of the CATCo Reinsurance Opportunities Fund Ltd., a London stock exchange listed retrocessional reinsurance-linked investment fund, has confirmed that it intends to return approximately $74m in aggregate to investors in the fund.

Bermuda-based provider of property and casualty reinsurance Third Point Reinsurance Ltd., which is backed by hedge fund manager Dan Loeb’s Third Point LLC, has announced the appointment of Mark Parkin as Chairman of its Audit Committee.

French reinsurance firm SCOR has launched a new collateralized reinsurance sidecar vehicle in time for the January renewals. Atlas Reinsurance X Limited launched at the end of 2013 and its $55.5m shares were listed in Ireland.

Overcapacity in the reinsurance market, created by the convergence of well capitalised traditional reinsurers, continued inflows of capital from third-parties and new entrants, has caused a soft buyers market across nearly all reinsurance lines at renewal, according to Willis Re.

Malta is now ready to act as a domicile for insurance-linked securities (ILS) and catastrophe bond issuers after regulations governing the formation and domicile of Reinsurance Special Purpose Vehicles (RSPV) were finalised and came into law.

Traditional reinsurers have continued to seek to differentiate themselves in order to secure signings at the January reinsurance renewals, as they fight back against alternative reinsurance capital and ILS, according to a report from broker Aon Benfield.

The total volume of catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS) issued during 2013 and listed in the Artemis Deal Directory hit $7.6417 billion by the end of the year as a flurry of deals in December closed the year at an all time high of $20.5 billion.