Insurance Linked Securities Interviews

Issues surrounding reserving are going to become a selection criteria for ILS fund managers given the significant loss creep in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, thinks Dirk Lohmann, CEO and co-founder of ILS specialists Secquaero.

Muted catastrophe reinsurance rate rises and loss creep could mean investors may be more reluctant to reload in the same way should the industry experience further major natural catastrophe losses, thinks Darren Redhead, CEO of Kinesis Capital Management, the third-party capital vehicle operated by Lancashire Holdings.

The ability of ILS markets to pay out and raise fresh capital in the aftermath of 2017’s major catastrophe losses was not a full test, according to Victor Peignet, CEO of Scor Global P&C.

Global catastrophe loss data aggregator, Property Claim Services (PCS), is “excited” at the prospect of its county-level industry loss data for all 50 U.S. states going live in early 2019, an enhancement that could make industry loss triggers more sensitive to losses at a county level.

ILS investors will be just as quick to replenish lost capital in the aftermath of major catastrophes, should Hurricane Florence and other losses hit the market in 2018, according to Michael Popkin, managing director and co-leader of JLT Capital Markets.

The reinsurance cycle will continue, but future peaks and troughs will increasingly be shaped by capital market appetite for insurance risk, thinks Lixin Zeng, chief executive of AlphaCat Managers Ltd.

As Hurricane Florence bears down on the US East Coast as a category 4 storm, Luca Albertini, CEO and founding partner of Leadenhall Capital Partners warned that regardless of whether it is a market-changing loss, it could trap collateral in retro programmes.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) market has become “an established force” in the natural catastrophe underwriting markets, but Christian Mumenthaler, the CEO of reinsurance firm Swiss Re, questions whether ILS markets are operating in sustainable territory.

Fermat Capital Management’s John Seo explains to Artemis why the “great reload” of 2018 sounded the final death knell of the traditional reinsurance cycle.

Insurance and reinsurance firms should not take it for granted that capital will flow into the industry in the aftermath of another major loss, thinks Frank Majors, co-founder and principal of Nephila Capital.