Archive for November, 2017

Florida headquartered primary insurer Universal Insurance Holdings has reported just a $37 million net loss from hurricane Irma’s impact on its home state, as its reinsurance providers took somewhere north of $400 million of its losses, some of which will have falled to ILS funds and collateralized sources.

Bermuda-headquartered ILS and reinsurance management, servicing, risk transformation and fronting specialist Horseshoe Group has announced two senior hires with which it aims to strengthen its growing insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund administration offering.

Munich Re is the latest of the major reinsurance firms to signal that it is expecting at least some reversal of recent price softening across catastrophe business and perhaps other lines, as it hopes for a “significant market recovery.”

Contrary to the long-held belief (in some circles) that ILS investors would flee from the market following any major catastrophe losses, the response so far has been extremely positive and at this point in time the interest being shown by investors is perhaps at an all-time high.

Arch Capital Group Ltd. would be interested in managing more third-party reinsurance capital alongside its own capacity, should the market improve significantly and present opportunities following recent catastrophe events, according to the firm’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Constantine Iordanou.

The reinsurance industry has been guilty of chronically underpricing catastrophe exposed products, which means it is natural that following major losses such as the hurricanes and earthquakes seen in Q3 2017 the market reaches an inflection point as it looks to reprice, according to Mike McGavick, CEO of XL Group Ltd.

The stricken Gator Re Ltd. catastrophe bond has finally matured and its notes have been delisted, which means any remaining principal will now either have been paid out to the sponsor American Strategic Insurance to cover its losses, or returned to investors.

Markel CATCo Investment Management Ltd., the collateralized reinsurance and retrocessional investment fund manager, is aiming to raise at least $250 million of new capital for its stock exchange listed retrocessional reinsurance fund, to take advantage of new demand at the January renewals.

German reinsurance player Hannover Re saw its retrocession capacity providers take more than half of its losses from hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. Following the major losses the reinsurer has freed up capital from its investment portfolio, for tactical considerations at the renewals.

Topping the agenda at the current COP23, 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP) annual UN climate conference held in Bonn, Germany over the coming fortnight, is the topic of climatic loss and damage, providing an opportunity for risk transfer and re/insurance practices to take centre stage.