Archive for February, 2014

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has signed two grant agreements totaling $3.9m, with the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture to expand a weather index insurance pilot to over one million East African farmers.

German reinsurer Hannover Re, the third largest reinsurance firm in the world, said in its latest quarterly results that it felt no significant impact from the inflow of capital from institutional investors in insurance-linked securities in its reinsurance renewals.

Impact Forecasting, the catastrophe modelling arm of reinsurance broker Aon Benfield, has said that it expects the insured loss toll from January’s severe spells of winter weather in the U.S. will be over $1.6 billion.

In future some well-capitalised reinsurance firms may find it more attractive to grow their business through increasing intakes of capital from third-party ILS investors rather than by growing their equity investor base, says a report from Credit Suisse analysts.

Blue Capital Reinsurance Holdings Ltd. (BCRH), the exchange listed collateralized reinsurance subsidiary of Bermuda reinsurer Montpelier Re, has given some more details on its deployment of capital within its 2014 underwriting portfolio.

Swan Re Ltd. has launched in Bermuda as the latest reinsurance firm backed by an asset manager following a hedge fund reinsurer strategy of using its capital to underwrite while generating additional profits investing the premium or float within its investment strategies.

During the course of 2013 the difference between the frequency and severity of catastrophe events was highlighted, as the number of events exceeded the average while insured losses did not, according to Property Claim Services (PCS) 2013 catastrophe report.

The decline in catastrophe bond and insurance-linked security (ILS) spreads and premiums over the last year has been well document, with some tranches seeing 40% declines in pricing over comparable issuance a year earlier.

Bermuda-based reinsurance and third-party capital management specialists RenaissanceRe has revealed a renaming of the firms Upsilon retrocessional reinsurance sidecar for 2014, changing it to Upsilon Reinsurance Fund Opportunities Ltd.

Bermuda domiciled insurance, reinsurance and alternative capital management group Validus Holdings has seen reinsurance-linked assets under management at its AlphaCat third-party capital management and ILS unit increase to $1.6 billion by the end of 2013.