Archive for November, 2020

Conduit Re, the pure reinsurance start-up looking to raise $1.1 billion with a London Stock Exchange listing and launch in Bermuda, has had an early signal of approval from rating agency AM Best, which has given the company an all-important preliminary A- rating.

1347 Property Insurance Holdings, Inc. continues its transition towards a strategy focused on reinsurance and investment management and has now named interim CEO Larry Swets as its new permanent CEO, while also announcing a name change to FG Financial Group, Inc.

Global reinsurance firm Swiss Re has returned to the catastrophe bond market for what will be its fifth transaction of 2020 and its sixth in total under the Matterhorn Re program, with a $150 million U.S. named storm focused Matterhorn Re Ltd. (Series 2020-5) deal.

The share of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market attributed to direct institutional investors has increased in recent months, with this class of investor gaining ILS market share at the same time as multi-strategy funds have exited the space and reduced theirs, according to Aon.

As vendor catastrophe models and elevated annual losses show that secondary perils have grown in prevalence for the re/insurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) markets, climate risk needs to be explicitly baked in, according to Kelly Hereid, Director, Catastrophe Research & Development, Liberty Mutual Insurance.

The implications of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic on the re/insurance market suggests that the availability of capital is going to be a major issue, according to Tom Johansmeyer, Head of PCS.

AXIS Capital, the Bermuda headquartered global specialty insurance and reinsurance firm, has returned to the catastrophe bond market for the first time this year, with a target for an at least $100 million Northshore Re II Ltd. (Series 2021-1) issuance.

Broking group Aon has launched an Asia Pacific Capital Advisory unit within its Reinsurance Solutions operation, as it promises to deliver a holistic approach to capital optimisation for insurers and reinsurers across the region.

MSI GuaranteedWeather, LLC, a weather risk transfer focused subsidiary of MS&AD’s Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co., Ltd. (MSI), has developed a dual-trigger weather derivative product to help a renewable energy producer hedge the effects of two weather variables at the same time.

The market for investments in insurance-linked securities (ILS) is expected to return to growth by many of its core constituents after a stall in activity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey of the market by Willis Towers Watson has found.