Archive for August, 2023

A new statement from the incoming interim CEO of Vesttoo, Ami Barlev, claims that the company has now learned that “a number of factors, external to the company, led directly to the current crisis, including the involvement of certain foreign banks and financial institutions.”

The devastating wildfires in Maui, Hawaii are not expected to have any significant impact on the catastrophe bond market, specialist investment manager Plenum Investments has said.

Insurance and reinsurance broking giant Aon is pursuing beleaguered insurtech Vesttoo through a New York Court via its White Rock Insurance (SAC) Ltd. segregated account and transformer structure, and has so far secured a temporary restraining order to freeze Vesttoo’s funds.

In analysing US insurer filings for their use of letters of credit (LOCs) specifically from one of the banks at the centre of the Vesttoo linked collateral fraud story, ALIRT Insurance Research found more than $1.3 billion of them, but said it is hard to tell how much of that is associated with Vesttoo, or […]

The CEO of one of the world’s largest reinsurance companies said today that he believes the current hard market conditions can sustain into 2025, as the sector faces numerous pressures still.

ALIRT Insurance Research has concluded that, ultimately, all of the parties exposed to the alleged fraudulent LOC issue engulfing insurtech Vesttoo bear some responsibility, stating that it’s “difficult to fathom” that the fraud was “able to evade multiple levels of due diligence”.

While global reinsurance firm Hannover Re’s large losses came in under budget for the first-half of 2023, the company still reported that it ceded just over EUR 128 million of the natural catastrophe loss burden to its retrocession program and capital partners.

Specialty insurance and reinsurance group Lancashire Holdings continued to grow in the first half of 2023 on the back of strong growth last year, with gross premiums written (GPW) up more than 26% to almost $1.2 billion on the back of expansion in property business amid substantial rate increases.

Hail damage is once again driving the loss trend for severe convective storms (SCS) in the United States, with the insurance industry loss tally nearing $40 billion already this year and a record number of multi-billion dollar events seen, Gallagher Re’s Steve Bowen has said.

One of the key drivers for some insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds in their strong recovery following September 2022’s hurricane Ian struck Florida is the fact many of the contracts they had written were at higher attachment points, and so have avoided losses.