Archive for April, 2016

Independent Zurich based insurance-linked securities (ILS) and catastrophe bond fund manager Plenum Investments Ltd. is partnering with Bermudian collateralized reinsurance and ILS investments start-up Sequant Re to launch a new high-yielding ILS fund.

In a slight improvement on the -4% decline witnessed in recent months, U.S. commercial P&C rates declined by an average 3% year-on-year in March, as insurers somewhat diluted their aggressive stance on pricing, according to MarketScout.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 10th April 2016, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics. To ensure you never miss a thing subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates.

Insurance-linked security (ILS) and catastrophe bond rates-on-line have remained relatively stable for more than a year now, with the Lane Financial LLC synthetic rate-on-line index showing a slight uptick in the last quarter.

The forthcoming launch of the first marine cargo and specie catastrophe risk model from RMS will provide an enhanced approach to marine risk quantification, helping ILS investors and capital to increase participation in the marine insurance and reinsurance market.

The World Bank Group aims to expand the use of sovereign disaster risk transfer instruments by the year 2020, hoping to add five more countries to those covered by instruments such as insurance, risk pools and contingent finance.

U.S. insurance group Chubb Ltd. has revealed that it ceded $115m of reinsurance premiums to ABR Reinsurance Ltd. in 2015, its captive-style and total return reinsurer joint-venture with Blackrock, recognising commissions of $30m in the year.

After a busy 2015 for M&A activity in the insurance and reinsurance industry, 2016 is expected to follow suit. However, a new Standard & Poor’s (S&P) report shows that re/insurance sector M&A is more often than not negative for those involved, with synergies rarely achieved.

Reinsurance brokerage Aon Benfield underlined the continued, and impressive growth of multiple features of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market during 2015, including ILWs, cat bonds, sidecars, and the rapidly expanding collateralized reinsurance space.

The U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) needs to embrace risk-based pricing of flood insurance risks and leverage private risk transfer markets and reinsurance capital in order to reduce the burden and improve the flood insurance market, according to the ABIR.