Archive for July, 2020

Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc., the Florida headquartered and nationally expanding U.S. property casualty insurer, said that it experienced an unusually high number of catastrophe events in the second-quarter of 2020, driving an expectation of roughly $26.8 million of pre-tax losses from severe weather.

Further evidence of the elevated impacts of severe and convective weather in the second-quarter of 2020 are apparent in a pre-announcement from property and casualty insurer The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc., which expects around $148 million of catastrophe losses for the quarter.

Arch Capital Group, the Bermuda headquartered specialist multi-line insurance and reinsurance carrier, has pre-announced an expectation that its second-quarter 2020 catastrophe losses, including from the pandemic, will reach as much as $225 million.

Recent tropical storm Fay, which took the record as the earliest F named storm in history as it targeted the U.S. northeast region, is estimated to have caused an insurance market loss of roughly $400 million by catastrophe risk modeller Karen Clark & Company (KCC).

U.S. primary insurance carrier Travelers is the first major player to reveal its expectations of making a relatively significant PG&E subrogation recovery, while at the same time revealing $854 million pre-tax catastrophe losses from the second-quarter.

The emergence of second waves of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic could create another meaningful hit to the capital bases of insurance and reinsurance companies, as both investment market volatility and insured losses will mount.

The trend of insured against uninsured losses across the Asia Pacific region is not sustainable, and the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market will need to play an integral role in addressing the issue, according to Paul Schultz, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Aon Securities.

An accelerated period of rate hardening across a broad range of insurance and reinsurance market exposures is expected to attract start-ups, perhaps leading to a Class of 2020 if the “significant hurdles” can be overcome.

Having returned to growth in the fourth-quarter of 2019, alternative reinsurance capital, for deployment into insurance-linked securities (ILS), collateralised contracts and catastrophe bonds, declined 4% to $91 billion in the first-quarter of 2020, as the impacts of Covid-19 further dented already constrained supply, according to broker Aon.

The Ridgecrest, California sequence of earthquakes has increased the risk of a major San Andreas fault earthquake event occurring, according to newly published research.