Archive for February, 2014

Interesting news from Bloomberg, reporting last week that hedge fund and institutional asset manager Pine River Capital Management is actively seeking to raise up to $750m for the launch of its own reinsurance firm, Pine River Re Ltd.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 16th February 2014, on catastrophe bonds, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics, from the last seven days on Artemis. To ensure you never miss a thing  subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates.

The procession of severe European windstorms continues to impact the UK and northern Europe, while severe flooding across the UK and northern France worsens, with financial losses for the insurance and reinsurance industry now rising fast.

U.S. specialty insurance group Assurant has been an end-user of capital markets third-party backed reinsurance capacity for some time, through its catastrophe bonds and use of collateralized coverage. In 2014 Assurant may look to the capital markets again.

With over $4.2 billion of outstanding catastrophe bonds scheduled to mature in 2014, the insurance-linked securities (ILS) and cat bond primary issuance market will have opportunities to entice sponsors to re-issue their risks in new transactions in 2014.

2013 gave the reinsurance industry a respite, following two above-average years of losses in 2011 and 2012. Insured losses in 2013 from natural catastrophes and man-made disasters are estimated at around $40 billion, according to reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter.

Despite 2013 seeing the second highest level of catastrophe bond and insurance-linked security (ILS) issuance on record a feature of the year was rising secondary market prices and this trend continued into December.

AlphaCat Managers Ltd., the third-party reinsurance capital management and insurance-linked securities (ILS) unit of Bermuda insurance, reinsurance and alternative capital group Validus Holdings, has appointed a new CFO.

Zurich Insurance Group has increased the attachment point of its most recent catastrophe bond transaction, Lakeside Re III Ltd., at the transactions annual reset on 1st January citing increased exposure of its reinsurance requirements.

The unprecedented winter weather affecting northern Europe has continued in recent weeks, as a result of which PERILS AG has added four more European windstorms and the recent severe UK floods to its list of events under investigation this winter.