Best of Artemis, week ending 16th October 2016

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 16th October 2016, 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.

Join Artemis in New York on February 3rd 2017 for ILS NYC

Ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 16th October 2016:

1. Early Hurricane Matthew insured loss estimates suggest up to $6bn
   Insurance and reinsurance sector losses from hurricane Matthew are currently converging on a total impact of around $6 billion, but it is still very early to put a figure on the impact of Matthew given the large area of U.S. coastline affected. Other estimates have since emerged, of up to $8.8 billion and $7 billion.

2. Cat bond index in biggest drop since 2012 on hurricane Matthew
   The Swiss Re Global Cat Bond Index has declined by the largest amount since 2012 on the threat posed by hurricane Matthew’s approach towards Florida, as mark to market losses flowed through into investor and brokers cat bond pricing expectations.

3. Laetere Re & First Coast Re cat bonds trade down on Matthew
   All three tranches of the Laetere Re Ltd. (Series 2016-1) catastrophe bond and the single tranche of the First Coast Re Ltd. (Series 2016-1) cat bond, traded down at lower and even distressed pricing at the back-end of last week due to hurricane Matthew’s approach. First Coast Re’s price in the secondary market bounced back later in the week.

4. A thoughtfully curated ILS event in New York City – Artemis ILS NYC 2017
   We’re launching our latest conference to a wider audience today. Artemis ILS NYC 2017, our first U.S. event, was announced to our newsletter subscribers yesterday and now registration for the conference is open to the world.

5. World Bank looks to cat bonds for other kinds of risk
   The World Bank has been helping countries to access the capital markets for catastrophe insurance and disaster risk transfer for over a decade, but now the organisation is looking to the catastrophe bond structure as a way to help mitigate other kinds of risks.

6. 50% of mid-estimate $5bn Matthew loss to fall to reinsurance: JPM
   Analysts at J.P. Morgan have said that an approximate $5 billion insured industry loss from hurricane Matthew would see reinsurers front roughly 50% of the bill, and would see Europe’s big four reinsurers call on divergent levels of retrocession.

7. Hanjin re/insurance loss could be half a Tianjin ($2bn): Credit Suisse
   The insurance and reinsurance sector could ultimately face a loss of as much up to $2 billion due to the financial collapse and bankruptcy of Hanjin Shipping this year, according to analysts at Credit Suisse. If that size of loss manifests, it has the potential to seep through to ILS funds investing in specialty risks.

8. Heritage puts Matthew losses below $100m, Citrus Re cat bonds safe
   Heritage Insurance Holdings Inc. said it expects its losses from hurricane Matthew will be less than $100m, with losses above a $40m retention falling within the insurers reinsurance tower but missing the $727.5m of Citrus Re catastrophe bonds.

9. Alternative capital could fill capacity gaps left by reinsurance M&A: Fitch
   In response to recent merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the global reinsurance market and the potential for it to increase, Fitch Ratings has suggested that alternative reinsurance capital could expand and replace any lost capital.

10. Price trajectory converging between reinsurance & insurance: Credit Suisse
    Reinsurance pricing has been on the decline for a number of years, as regular readers will be all to aware, but during much of that time primary insurance lines still saw rate increases. That could be changing as price expectations start to converge, according to analysts at Credit Suisse.

This is by no means every article published on Artemis during the last week, just the most popular, some of which were published over a week ago. There were 28 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.

Get listed in our MarketView directory of professionals.

View the current breakdown of the market in our range of charts, allowing you to analyse the cat bond market.

Artemis’ Q3 2016 Catastrophe Bond & ILS Market Report – Weather risk returns, private deals, market growth

We’ve now published our Q3 2016 catastrophe bond & ILS market report.

This report reviews the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market at the end of the third-quarter of 2016, looking at the new risk capital issued and the composition of transactions completed during Q2 2016.

Q3 saw $1.087 billion of risk capital issued from eight transactions, making it the third most active Q3 of the last decade in terms of deal volume, and one of the busiest in the market’s history in terms of number of deals. Strong investor appetite for cat bond and ILS investment saw the outstanding market size increase from the $25.174 billion recorded at the end of Q2, to $25.449 billion.

Download your copy here.