Archive for August, 2020

According to reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter the amount of alternative capital in the market, across insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds, collateralised reinsurance structures and catastrophe bonds, shrank by approximately 2.7% in the first-half of this year.

The fact that insurance and reinsurance companies sold California wildfire related claims to third-parties may ultimately reduce the amount of subrogation recoveries that flow back to reinsurance and retrocessional interests, it appears.

Analysts at KBW have warned that rising losses facing the insurance industry through 2020, with the threat of hurricanes increasing as we move towards peak season and the COVID-19 pandemic hanging over the sector, point to “ever-stronger 2021 reinsurance rate increases” suggesting the 2021 renewals are set for some significant increases again.

Wildfires burning across the state of California continue to destroy land and property in the last 24 hours, but the containment of some of the most threatening blazes has increased a little for now after fire weather conditions proved not as impactful as expected yesterday.

Hurricane Laura has now formed over the Gulf becoming the fourth hurricane of the 2020 season, after having successfully navigated the length of Bermuda and the Caribbean and emerged over the Gulf of Mexico where there is plenty of fuel for Laura to intensify further, although models dispute how strong a hurricane it could become.

In spite of the overhang of a global pandemic, catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) issuance was robust in the first half of the year, leading reinsurance giant Swiss Re to be very optimistic that market capacity will rebound.

MS Amlin Underwriting Limited, the Lloyd’s insurance and reinsurance arm of MS Amlin and part of the Japanese MS&AD group, has announced the appointment of a new Chief Underwriting Officer, hiring Andrew Carrier from Everest Re for the role.

After canvassing a number of insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment fund managers and end-investors for their views on possible loss impacts due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority strongly believe that impacts from the business interruption issue will only be minimal to their ILS strategies and ILS portfolios.

Based on the latest forecast information, catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment manager Plenum Investments believes that hurricane Laura may not be strong enough to impact any outstanding cat bonds in its portfolio.

The impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on the insurance and reinsurance industry looks like it will be more of an earnings event than a capital event, according to David Flandro, Managing Director, Analytics at Hyperion X.