Archive for November, 2017

Adding further weight to its calls for reinsurance pricing to rise significantly, reinsurer Swiss Re said that it believes that the excess capacity that has fueled the soft market in recent years has largely evaporated in the wake of the hurricanes, with the trapping of collateral from alternative markets a key reason for this.

Rate rises across the insurance and reinsurance industry following the major catastrophe losses of recent months may not be sufficient to relieve the pressure on London market re/insurers underwriting results, according to Fitch Ratings.

Bermuda reinsurance firm RenaissanceRe continued to grow the size of its third-party investor capital backed retrocessional reinsurance vehicle Upsilon through the mid-year renewals and into the third-quarter, reporting that the total assets of Upsilon RFO had jumped to $453.8 million, on a U.S. GAAP accounted basis.

Ascot Reinsurance Company Limited (Ascot Re), the newly registered Bermuda reinsurance platform for the Ascot Group, will begin its operations acting as a kind of third-party capitalised sidecar for the Ascot Syndicate 1414, by taking a quota share from the firms Lloyd’s operations.

Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc., a key cedant for the alternative reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, will soon be operating out of twelve U.S states, having received approval for its acquisition of Narragansett Bay Insurance Company (NBIC).

Ascot Reinsurance Company Limited (Ascot Re) is being launched in Bermuda as a Class 3B reinsurance company by Ascot Group Limited, with a $1 billion injection of capital from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and ex-Third Point Re CEO John Berger lined up to lead the company.

Specialty insurance and reinsurance firm Brit Ltd. has announced the launch of a new specialty re/insurance platform, Scion Underwriting Managers, which it says will partner both with its own balance-sheet, other markets and also third-party capital providers.

The insurance and reinsurance industry loss from ex-hurricane Ophelia has been found to be just EUR 60 million by PERILS AG, which said that while a rare form of European windstorm the impacts from Ophelia were much less severe than feared.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 26th November 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.

Despite estimating global catastrophe losses of $92.5 billion in the third-quarter of 2017, analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) expect the availability of both traditional and alternative reinsurance capital to limit rate increases in 2018, while market themes persist.