Archive for August, 2016

Insurance and reinsurance group Aspen is set to make greater use of reinsurance capacity as it sees the time as right to take advantage of pricing and appetite, in order to help it to reduce its probable maximum loss, something it has also been using its Aspen Capital Markets unit to do.

Despite a record-breaking start to the year catastrophe bond and ILS issuance contracted in the first-half of 2016, as issuance levels failed to keep up with high levels of demand, ultimately leading to reduced pricing and the tightening of secondary market spreads, according to Swiss Re.

Bermuda based hedge fund backed reinsurance firm Third Point Re saw its asset side outperform in the second quarter of 2016, as a rise in its combined ratio and a technical underwriting loss was compensated for by higher investment returns.

Global severe convective storm activity in July resulted in another billion dollar plus bill for insurance and reinsurance capital to pay, as severe thunderstorm, tornado, hail, rainfall and wind caused by convective activity, resulted in over $1.3 billion of insured losses worldwide.

Chris Parry, previously an ILS, reinsurance capital markets and catastrophe bond specialist at Aon Securities, has begun his new role as a Managing Director in Bermudian reinsurer RenaissanceRe’s Ventures unit.

A notable moderation in reserve redundancies and a spike in the occurrence of deficiencies across the global Property & Casualty (P&C) sector, suggest it might be wrong to assume reserves will always have a positive contribution on earnings, according to reinsurance broker JLT Re.

Australian primary insurance group Suncorp has bulked up on its catastrophe and weather reinsurance protection again, as the firm has increasingly suffered losses and its CEO states that the increased frequency of medium-sized catastrophe losses is hurting the firm.

Supply of reinsurance capital and capacity continues to “far exceed demand in worldwide property and casualty reinsurance” as market conditions remain challenging, according to Hannover Re, but the German reinsurer says “further indications of a bottoming out in prices could be discerned.”

Hurricane Earl made landfall close to Belize City as a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 80mph, the fifth named storm of the 2016 Atlantic Tropical Storm & Hurricane Season is likely to cause widespread impacts from torrential, flooding rains expected widely throughout Central America.

The amount of investment income recorded from insurance, reinsurance and financial services group Alleghany Corporation’s equity stake in the results of specialist ILS manager Pillar Capital ramped up again in the second-quarter of 2016.