Archive for February, 2018

The World Bank sees the ability of its Treasury to mobilise fixed income capital to fund sustainability as a key piece of its mandate, with disaster risk transfer, in the form of catastrophe bonds, insurance and weather risk trades, seen as important tools to protect against the erosion of specific countries development gains.

The abundant availability of risk transfer, insurance and reinsurance capacity, from both traditional and alternative sources, has muted the firming of the property insurance market, according to brokerage Willis Towers Watson.

Insurance claims due to the impact of hurricane Irma are rising above $10.2 billion, with the total reported by the regulator in Florida having now neared $8 billion, while a French insurance association reports claims in the Caribbean are now expected to reach $2.26 billion.

Insurance Australia Group (IAG) has benefited from its aggregate reinsurance in the first-half of its financial year, with a $120 million recovery from its reinsurers helping to reduce volatility from catastrophe losses.

Global specialty insurance and reinsurance company Brit Ltd. has increased the size of its fully-collateralized reinsurance sidecar Versutus Ltd. to $187 million for 2018, which alongside its other capital markets activities takes third-party capital managed at the firm to $400 million.

Bermudian insurer and reinsurer, Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited, announced during its Q4 2017 earnings call that it grew its third-party capital assets under management (AuM) by more than 20% in 2017, taking the total to $550 million.

Insurance giant American International Group (AIG) will aim to be a “predictable buyer of reinsurance” going forwards, according to CEO Brian Duperreault, as it looks to reduce its exposure to frequency catastrophe events and better manager its overall natural catastrophe exposure, particularly in the U.S.

Hymans Robertson, a consultancy that facilitates pension risk transfer solutions including longevity swap and reinsurance transactions, has named Michael Abramson as a Partner and Risk Transfer Specialist, joining the company from Prudential.

Watford Re, the third-party capital backed total-return reinsurance venture part-owned by Bermudian insurer and reinsurer Arch Capital, alongside asset manager Highbridge Principal Strategies, suffered a significant rise in its loss ratio during the fourth-quarter of 2017.

The initial estimate of insurance and reinsurance industry losses due to European windstorm Burglind, also known as Eleanor, has been put at EUR 643 million by catastrophe loss data aggregator PERILS AG.