Archive for January, 2019

Opportunities remain in the healthy and expanding weather risk market with both capacity supply and demand supporting short-term growth. And, at the same time, there’s likely to be a shift in weather market leadership away from “reinsurers with a front end”, according to Martin Malinow, President, Sompo Global Weather.

Global Parametrics, the parametric and index-based risk transfer company that launched with the backing of the UK and German governments, will utilise one of the world’s fastest computers to enhance its climate and seismic risk models and help it develop products.

Agile Risk Advisory, the specialist direct & facultative (D&F) property risk underwriting  start-up for the world’s top two thousand global companies and which wants to leverage ILS investors as supporting capacity, has secured seed funding from an established MGA backer.

The property loss caused by the December hail storm in Sydney and the surrounding area of Australia is estimated to have caused an insurance and reinsurance market loss of A$635 million (US$462m) by PERILS AG.

Bermudian insurance and reinsurance specialist AXIS Capital Holdings Limited significantly increased its activities with third-party investors in 2018, doubling its premiums ceded through ILS type arrangements to so-called strategic capital partners to nearly $600 million.

RenaissanceRe CEO Kevin O’Donnell said that reinsurance and retrocession rate increases secured by his firm at the key January renewals were higher than the reports of a largely flat market suggested.

Despite the heavy impact of losses during the fourth-quarter of 2018, Blue Capital Reinsurance Holdings Ltd., the stock exchange listed, collateralized reinsurer owned by Sompo International Holdings Ltd., came out of 2018 with a much improved accident year loss ratio.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has renewed its traditional flood reinsurance program to cover the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) for 2019 at the slightly smaller size of $1.32 billion.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) market is ripe for expansion in the casualty space and growth is being driven by the diversification and capital deployment needs of ILS fund managers, according to Jim Robinson, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MultiStrat Advisors Inc.

Insurance and reinsurance market loss estimates for catastrophes and severe weather that struck Japan in 2018 continue to creep upwards, leading some analysts to suggest that the April renewal could prove a needed catalyst for pricing.