Archive for May, 2014

Reinsurance focused lawyers are finding an increasing amount of transactional work from the growing insurance linked securities and alternative reinsurance capital markets, according to a new study.

More details have come to light on one of the recent catastrophe bond transactions to launch, the $100m Aozora Re Ltd. (Series 2014-1) Japanese typhoon cat bond from primary Japanese insurer sponsors Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance.

Insurance and reinsurance brokerage Willis Group brokered the $55m of reinsurance protection that supports the first African parametric catastrophe insurance pool, which we announced the launch of yesterday by African Risk Capacity (ARC Ltd).

The Dutch pension fund for railway workers, Spoorwegpensioenfonds (SPF),which invests over €12.6 billion of assets on behalf of its clients, sees allocating a portion of its asset base to catastrophe bonds as an investment opportunity with social importance.

The first catastrophe insurance pool for African nations has been launched today by African Risk Capacity (ARC), a specialised agency set-up by the African Union to help member states become more resilient to extreme weather events and to protect food insecure populations.

Royal London, the largest mutual life insurance and pensions provider in the UK, has announced the completion of a longevity reinsurance transaction which saw it transfer approximately £1 billion of longevity risk to RGA International Reinsurance Company Ltd.

The increase in primary catastrophe bond market issuance in April, helped by almost $1 billion of new bonds issued and a pipeline containing more than $2 billion by the end of the month, helped to balance supply and demand in the secondary market.

The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), the parametric insurance and catastrophe risk pooling facility for Caribbean countries, is considering catastrophe bonds and collateralized reinsurance as part of its risk transfer, according to its CEO.

In this series of interviews with investment managers from high-profile insurance-linked securities funds, collateralized reinsurance entities and reinsurance-linked investment firms, we hope to reveal a little more detail on the individual manager’s experience and the firm’s investment strategy.

Catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) issuance has accelerated rapidly during the second quarter reaching $5.5 billion of new cat bonds issued to date in 2014, according to the volume of deals recorded in the Artemis Deal Directory.