Archive for January, 2018

As the European wind energy sector continues to expand but governments reduce support for new projects, global reinsurer Swiss Re’s Corporate Solutions unit is expecting the industry to shoulder a greater portion of weather volume risk, underlining the potential for innovative wind hedges and demand for capacity to rise.

Property Claim Services (PCS), a Verisk Analytics business, has now launched its awaited latest industry loss data solution for global specialty insurance and reinsurance lines, a new loss aggregation solution and risk transfer index for terrorism risks.

Impact Forecasting, the catastrophe and weather risk analysis arm of reinsurance brokerage Aon Benfield, has estimated the insurance industry losses from 2017 catastrophes and severe weather events at $134 billion, just slightly below the record high seen in 2011 of $137 billion.

The $200 million Vitality Re IX Ltd. (Series 2018-1) health insurance-linked securities (ILS) transaction from Aetna has now been priced and both tranches of notes have had their coupons fixed at levels below the bottom-end of the initial price guidance ranges.

Some alternative capital providers have started to report increased losses for recent catastrophe events, a trend that analysts at Jefferies expected to happen in 2018 in light of a reported $20 billion gap between company reported and re/insurance industry loss estimates.

Insurance and reinsurance group Argo Group International Holdings has delivered a preliminary estimate for its catastrophe losses in the fourth quarter of 2017, saying the majority are from the California wildfire events.

Bermudian insurance and reinsurance firm AXIS Capital Holdings Limited is making some sweeping changes to its organisational structure, in the wake of its acquisition of Novae, one of which will see the firms ceded reinsurance function merged with third-party capital activities, under the watch of Ben Rubin.

It’s been reported that Lloyd’s of London has begun the process of looking more seriously at collateralised reinsurance instruments, such as insurance-linked securities (ILS) and catastrophe bonds, as a way to augment its own capacity and to offload excess risks to third-parties.

Australian insurance group QBE has reported that its fourth quarter catastrophe losses and adverse development from losses due to hurricane Maria are set to cost the firm $130 million, leading the insurer to expect an after tax loss for the fiscal year of $1.2 billion.

Almost the entire western coastline of the United States has been placed under a tsunami alert following a major magnitude 7.9 earthquake that struck off the coast of Alaska at around 09:30 GMT this morning.