Best of Artemis, week ending 12th February 2012

Here’s our Monday morning chance for you to catch up on the most viewed articles of the last week. We had a few technical issues last week after our web host suffered a major attack, sorry if this impacted your use of Artemis it was unfortunately out of our control. The problem is now rectified so this gives everyone who tried to visit Artemis last week a chance to catch up. Here are the most popular stories of the last seven days on Artemis.

Top ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 12th February 2012:

1. Cat bond and ILS secondary market trading patterns in 2011
   This interesting graph shows the volume of secondary market ILS trades that Swiss Re’s trading desk dealt with during 2011. It shows the cumulative traded figure along with monthly volume, which clearly displays the impact some events had on the secondary cat bond and ILS market.
2. Catastrophe bonds; a unique asset class offering sizeable returns
   Once again the world’s press are offering cat bonds and ILS as a great alternative investment opportunity in the current economic and financial market climate.
3. Kibou Ltd. catastrophe bond from Zenkyoren doubles in size
   Zenkyorens Japan quake cat bond Kibou Ltd. manages to double in size to $300m before close.
4. How market and catastrophe events impact pricing and RoL of industry-loss warranties
   This interesting visualisation shows how certain events impacted the rate-on-line and pricing of the ILW market over the last few years.
5. The size of the industry loss warranty market over time
   This graph shows how the ILW market has grown over the last few years.
6. California Earthquake Authority now uses catastrophe bonds for 10% of its risk transfer
   After closing their latest Embarcadero Re cat bond the CEA now receives 10% of its risk transfer from the capital markets via cat bonds.
7. Vega Capital 2010-1 cat bond upgraded by Moody’s on improving outlook
   The clever structure used in the Vega Capital deal means that as time passes it becomes less risky and as a result the notes have been upgraded.
8. CEA’s Embarcadero Re 2012-1 completes and notes list in Bermuda
   Our story on the completion of the latest CEA catastrophe bond.
9. S&P upgrades Vitality Re and Vitality Re II on positive claims trends
   These two medical benefit ratio linked ILS deals have been upgraded as the claims experience of the underlying books of reinsured business have not been as bad as originally forecast.
10. Catastrophe bond issuance could hit $6 billion in 2012: Axa
    Axa are the latest large market participant to come out positively in favour of a big year for ILS and cat bonds.