Archive for February, 2020

France headquartered global reinsurance firm SCOR delivered a profit from its property and casualty underwriting business in 2019 despite higher than budgeted catastrophe losses and an overall loss ratio that came out higher than the prior year.

Lloyd’s of London said that it will continue progressing its plans to make the insurance and reinsurance market more welcoming and accessible to insurance-linked securities (ILS) capital providers, but only in parallel with its 2020 priority deliverables under the first phase of the Future at Lloyd’s.

The Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, a state pension fund that provides retirement solutions to Arkansas education professionals, has approved another $30 million allocation to ILS and reinsurance focused investment manager Aeolus Capital Management at the end of 2019.

Use of third-party capital has continued to increase at Bermuda headquartered international specialty insurance and reinsurance firm Argo Group, with its net premiums dipping as a result of sharing more of its underwritten risk premiums (and likely losses) with third-party investors.

Michael van der Straaten, the CEO of reinsurance group Qatar Re, has now also been appointed as the CEO of QIC Global, the international specialty insurance and reinsurance subsidiary of Qatar Insurance Group.

The pressure is rising on the World Bank’s pandemic catastrophe bond transaction as the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV or Covid-19) spreads internationally and the number of deaths in certain countries around the globe nears the trigger point.

Reinsurance and retrocession cedents have been trapping increasing amounts of ILS collateral for longer periods of time than in the past, broker Aon said, as uncertainty over loss creep from catastrophe events has driven them to be more cautious.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) successfully secured its latest and third catastrophe bond issuance, FloodSmart Re Ltd. (Series 2020-1), at the upsized target of $400 million, adding to its “lynchpin” flood reinsurance program.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) allocation of the pension fund of global beverage giant The Coca Cola Company has shrunk again in 2019, ending the year -14% smaller likely due to a continuation of loss impacts following the major catastrophe events of recent years.

Retrocessional reinsurance investment manager Markel CATCo is proposing to make compulsory redemptions or buy-backs of some of the remaining shares of its listed and in run-off investment strategy the CATCo Reinsurance Opportunities Fund Ltd.