Archive for April, 2020

Beazley, the specialist Lloyd’s focused insurance and reinsurance underwriting business, has revealed an expected Covid-19 claims burden of $170 million net of reinsurance across its business. We would expect some of that loss to be shared with investors backing the companies third-party capital arrangements.

Germany headquartered reinsurance firm Hannover Re has withdrawn its profit guidance for 2020 due to the uncertainty over claims from the Covid-19 pandemic and the capital market environment.

Fronting insurance holding company Obsidian has announced the hiring of program underwriting specialist Dan Larkin as the firms new Chief Underwriting Officer.

TigerRisk Partners LLC, the global risk, capital and reinsurance brokerage and advisory, is targeting accelerated and growth has taken a strategic investment from private equity specialist Flexpoint Ford LLC.

A number of insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund managers have proactively marked-down some collateralised reinsurance positions, seeing a risk of potential exposure and perhaps even some losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

U.S. primary insurer Travelers has reported a decline in its first-quarter net income, with the major dent to the result seemingly being elevated catastrophe losses, with the Tennessee tornadoes in March a key driver.

Alternative reinsurance capital, for deployment into insurance-linked securities (ILS), collateralised contracts and catastrophe bonds, returned to outright growth in the fourth-quarter of 2019, ending the year up 2% on the prior quarter, but still -2% down on the end of the previous year.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that the Covid-19 pandemic constitutes a “natural disaster” potentially setting an unwelcome precedent for some in reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS).

Reinsurance companies need to focus on capital preservation in order to offset the impacts in terms of losses and investment declines from the Covid-19 pandemic, according to S&P Global Ratings.

A steering group has been formed by UK insurance and reinsurance industry leaders with Stephen Catlin of Convex as Chair, to work with UK government backed mutual terrorism reinsurance firm Pool Re to strengthen the industry’s response to future pandemics.