Archive for June, 2020

New Zealand’s state-owned residential property disaster insurance entity the Earthquake Commission (EQC) has utilised some alternative capital within its recently completed $6.2 billion reinsurance program renewal, the entity has told us.

Liberty Mutual Re, the reinsurance underwriting arm of the Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, has announced the hiring of Scott Mackie, formerly of AXA XL, to a U.S. property treaty reinsurance role.

Pacific Gas and Electricity (PG&E), the wildfire stricken California focused electrical utility operator, has achieved another important milestone in its history, as its bankruptcy plan has now been confirmed putting it on track to join the California Wildfire Fund and also to make its subrogation settlement payments.

Electrical utility Sempra Energy has returned to the catastrophe bond market with a $75 million SD Re Ltd. (Series 2020-1) transaction, as it seeks to extend the California wildfire insurance protection it receives from capital markets investors.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 21st June 2020, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics. To ensure you never miss a thing subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates or get our email alerts for every article we publish.

Cat bond issuance has continued apace in recent weeks, with total catastrophe bond and related insurance-linked securities (ILS) issuance for 2020 so far now reaching almost $8.25 billion, according to Artemis’ Deal Directory data.

John Forney, who as we reported this morning has departed from United Insurance Holdings (UPC) has already resurfaced with a new lead role as Chief Executive Officer of  specialty residential property insurance company GeoVera Insurance Holdings, Ltd.

Global reinsurance broker Willis Re, part of the Willis Towers Watson group of companies, has announced the hiring of Kirsten van Exel, who was most recently an insurance-linked securities (ILS) underwriter for Netherlands headquartered global life insurance company, annuities provider and pension investment manager Aegon.

The CCRIF SPC (formerly known as the Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility) is set to extend discounts on premiums and other coverage benefits to certain of its members with the support of the World Bank, to assist them in continuing with their parametric disaster insurance protection, even despite the fiscal hits from Covid-19.

A recent severe hail storm event that impacted the Calgary area of Alberta, Canada is expected to become on the most costly hail loss events in the country’s history, with economic costs likely to exceed C$1 billion (US $735m), the majority of which will be covered by insurance and possibly some reinsurance as well.