Archive for June, 2017

The weather risk transfer space remains in its infancy but conditions are similar to that seen in the catastrophe market pre-2005, suggesting ample opportunity for innovation and expansion, according to Richard Oduntan, a Portfolio Manager at Nephila Capital, the world’s largest reinsurance-linked investment manager.

The argument for responsible investment (RI) in insurance-linked securities (ILS) can be seen in both society, with the benefits of insurance protection, and environmental benefits, such as building financial resilience to climate change, argue ILS market experts as part of a recent roundtable discussion.

The price guidance has been tightened on both tranches of sponsoring reinsurance firm Tokio Millennium Re’s Spectrum Capital Ltd. (Series 2017-1) catastrophe bond, with one tranche seeing pricing fall to below the initial coupon range.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 11th June 2017, 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.

The brisk issuance seen in the catastrophe bond market so far in 2017, which has resulted in the market achieving a new record size of over $29 billion in recent weeks, has helped investment manager OFI Global which is an Oppenheimer company, increase the size of its global cat bond strategy back to near highs.

Another new catastrophe bond has come to market, this time with the third visit to the cat bond market in recent years from Italian and global insurance giant Assicurazioni Generali S.p.A. with a EUR 200 million Lion II Re DAC transaction, as it seeks reinsurance protection against European perils including flood risks.

Risk modelling and analytics firm RMS has released an updated version of its risk models for earthquake risks in the United States, Canada and Mexico, with the new version seen as a “major step forward in managing earthquake risk.”

The month of May 2017 has resulted in an insurance and reinsurance industry loss of around $3 billion due to the impacts of severe convective storms, thunderstorms, tornadoes, large hail and associated damaging winds, taking the industry toll for the year-to-date to over $12 billion, according to Impact Forecasting.

Australian general insurer Insurance Australia Group (IAG) has bulked up its catastrophe reinsurance protection, adding another $1 billion of additional coverage which will sit atop the companies catastrophe reinsurance tower of $7 billion.

As the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) increasingly looks to risk capital, from traditional reinsurance and in the future capital markets, in order to de-risk itself and better protect the taxpayers who ultimately back it, it’s perhaps more likely we see ILS structures in the form of a sidecar than a flood catastrophe bond, S&P […]