Archive for May, 2018

The Colorado State University tropical weather forecasting team, the Tropical Storm Risks forecasters and the Weatherbell team have all toned down their forecasts for the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, pointing to cooling of Atlantic sea surface temperatures.

We’ve added another wave of speakers for the upcoming third instalment of our annual insurance-linked securities (ILS) conference in Asia, ILS Asia 2018, featuring the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), GC Securities, RenaissanceRe, Peak Re, Tullett Prebon, Aon Risk Solutions, Baker & McKenzie Wong & Leow LLC and AIR Worldwide.

Andy Marcell has been promoted to Chief Executive Officer of broker Aon’s new Reinsurance Solutions division, as the company puts in place a new leadership structure that aligns with its branding changes, which includes the dropping of the Aon Benfield name.

Global insurance and reinsurance firm Everest Re has announced some changes in the leadership of the firms collateralized reinsurance, sidecar-like investment vehicle, Mt. Logan Re Ltd., with David Whiting promoted to President as CEO Rick Pagnani is set to leave the firm.

Global reinsurance giant Swiss Re has highlighted the key macro trends that its research finds are threatening the insurance and reinsurance business model, among which are the insurance-linked securities (ILS) sector and in particular the risk of collateralised reinsurance.

Florida headquartered primary insurer Universal Insurance Holdings has successfully completed the placement of its 2018-2019 reinsurance program, which extends the top of its tower to $3 billion of coverage, while adding more multi-year protection as well.

Hamilton Insurance Group, the Bermuda based insurance and reinsurance holding company, has announced the launch of a third-party capital arm named Hamilton Capital Partners and has hired ILS sector specialist Brenton Slade from Horseshoe as Senior Vice President for the new unit.

Christopher Schaper, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Schinnerer Group, the underwriting manager and managing general agent arm of broker Marsh, believes that were 2018 to be another costly catastrophe year for the alternative capital space, it’s still unlikely capacity would flee the sector.

Loss creep from hurricane Irma continues to impact the insurance and reinsurance linked funds industry, as some ILS funds and collateralized reinsurance vehicles are recording negative performance once again for April, leading to divergent performance across the sector.

The insurance and reinsurance industry may be underestimating the frequency of major hurricanes, according to a research paper from the Bank Of England’s Insurance Division, which suggests that clustering of major storms into a single season could become more common.