Best of Artemis, week ending 11th July 2021

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 11th July 2021, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics. To ensure you never miss a thing subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates or get our email alerts for every article we publish.

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Ten most read articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 11th July 2021:

1. Jamaica’s first cat bond launched at $175m by World Bank IBRD
   The first catastrophe bond to benefit the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica has now been launched to investors, a $175 million deal seeking parametric named tropical storm and hurricane disaster insurance protection.
2. EC clears Aon’s acquisition of Willis Towers Watson with conditions
   In a significant step for the merger process, the European Commission cleared Aon’s acquisition of rival Willis Towers Watson, but with conditions attached. Meanwhile the US antitrust trial date remains some months away.
3. Hiscox hires Vincent Prabis as Managing Principal, Hiscox ILS
   Former SCOR Investment Partners insurance-linked securities (ILS) executive Vincent Prabis has been hired by Hiscox, to become its new Managing Principal, Hiscox ILS.
4. China’s government supportive of Hong Kong’s ILS strategy: ILS Asia 2021
   As options to issue insurance-linked securities (ILS) and catastrophe bonds expand in Asia, with the introduction of Hong Kong as a regulated ILS platform, attendees at our virtual ILS Asia 2021 conference heard of the support China’s government is offering to the initiative.
5. ILS investment funds deliver above average May returns
   The return of catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds as a group was above average in May 2021, at 0.58%, and even if you subtract the extraordinary boost one fund got due to what is expected to have been wildfire subrogation recoveries, the average ILS fund return was still better than the long-term mean.
6. Climate change won’t impact ILS investments uniformly: Twelve Capital
   Climate change is not expected to impact all forms of investment in insurance-linked securities (ILS) uniformly, according to Twelve Capital, which means for ILS investors and managers, analysing climate exposure, as well as establishing and updating a house view on risk is key.
7. ILW market continued to soften like cat bonds into July renewal: Willis Re
   The market for industry-loss warranty (ILW) protection continued to soften into the July renewal, broker Willis Re has explained, which appears to be a continuation of the trend seen pre-June, as these structures followed the catastrophe bond market’s pricing.
8. Ecological forestry + parametric risk transfer can reduce wildfire losses
   A new report on wildfire resilience insurance suggests that in order to help make wildfire insurance more accessible and affordable, a combined ecological forestry approach alongside parametric risk transfer could reduce wildfire losses for the insurance and reinsurance sector.
9. Catastrophe bond hard market continued to weaken in Q2: Lane Financial
   The hard market in catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS) continued to weaken through the second-quarter of 2021, leading consultancy Lane Financial LLC to warn that pricing may return to neutral through to the end of the year.
10. Astro Re cat bond shrinks to $40m, at higher-end of pricing
    According to sources, the Astro Re Pte. Ltd. (Series 2021-1) catastrophe bond, that is being sponsored by U.S. primary insurance group Frontline Insurance on behalf of itself and subsidiary First Protective, is set to shrink to $40 million in size, with pricing at the high-end of guidance.

This is not every article published on Artemis during the last week, just the most popular among our readers over the last seven days. There were 29 new articles published in the last week. To ensure you always stay up to date with Artemis and never miss a story subscribe to our weekly email newsletter which is delivered every Wednesday.

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