Archive for January, 2025

The CEO of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) has joined the calls on the California legislature to issue catastrophe bonds in order to recapitalise and stabilise the FAIR Plan in the wake of the damaging wildfire losses of recent weeks.

With the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market expected to continue growing by analysts at investment bank Jefferies, they say that this will necessitate a continued expansion further into new and secondary perils, to offer broader risk management for re/insurers and an increasingly diversified investment choice for allocators.

In a new update on the Los Angeles and Southern California wildfires, Evercore ISI analysts have said they believe that losses from the event are unlikely to change the trajectory of reinsurance pricing, which the firm anticipates will still be down 10% to 20% at the mid-year renewals.

Verisk’s Extreme Event Solutions division estimates that the insured industry losses to property from both the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles, will fall between $28 billion and $35 billion, driven primarily by losses to residential risks.

Aetna, the health, medical and benefits insurance unit of CVS Health, is on-track to secure what will be the largest insurance-linked securities (ILS) issuance in its long-standing Vitality Re series, as the firm’s sixteenth transaction continued to target $250 million of reinsurance from the Vitality Re XVI Ltd (Series 2025) deal.

Artemis has learned that Inigo Insurance, the London headquartered specialty insurance and reinsurance underwriter, is now seeking an upsized $115 million of protection from its new Montoya Re Ltd. (Series 2025-1) catastrophe bond deal, which is the first cat bond from Inigo to feature multiple tranches, one being a new subsequent event cover.

Hannover Re is now seeking an upsized $200 million in broad retrocession covering worldwide peak perils on an annual aggregate basis, from its new 3264 Re Ltd. (Series 2025-1) cat bond transaction that is in the market, Artemis has learned.

Descartes Underwriting, a data-driven risk transfer specialist managing general agency (MGA) and insurer with a parametric focus, has launched what it calls the world’s most advanced parametric insurance product to protect utility-scale solar farms in the United States against damage from tornadoes.

US primary insurance company Travelers has further increased the amount of protection it receives under its occurrence catastrophe excess-of-loss (XoL) reinsurance treaty to $3.675 billion at the January 1st renewals, but the retention rose to $4 billion as a lower layer was dropped.

Greg Case, CEO and Andy Marcell, CEO of Risk Capital at insurance and reinsurance broker Aon, have highlighted that innovation and new alternative  sources of capital are required to protect communities and assets, in bridging the gap between economic and insured catastrophe and climate losses.