Best of Artemis, week ending 18th May 2014

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 18th May 2014, on catastrophe bonds, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics, from the last seven days on Artemis. To ensure you never miss a thing  subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates.

Top ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 18th May 2014:

1. Citi Group highlights insurance securitization as a disruptive innovation
   Last year investment bank Goldman Sachs highlighted alternative capital in reinsurance as a key disruptive theme to watch in business today. This year banking and investments giant Citi Group has highlighted insurance securitization as an important disruptive innovation.
2. ILS investment manager interview: Darren Redhead, CEO of Kinesis Capital Management Limited
   In this series of interviews with investment managers from high-profile insurance-linked securities funds, collateralized reinsurance entities and reinsurance-linked investment firms, we hope to reveal a little more detail on the individual manager’s experience and the firm’s investment strategy.
3. Trailing 12 month cat bond issuance passes $9B, 2014 on course for records
   Catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) issuance has accelerated rapidly during the second quarter reaching $5.5 billion of new cat bonds issued to date in 2014, according to the volume of deals recorded in the Artemis Deal Directory.
4. Institutional investor appetite for insurance linked assets remains strong
   The expectation among senior figures in the insurance linked securities (ILS) and insurance or reinsurance linked investments space is that more institutional investors will allocate to the asset class as the reinsurance capacity it provides grows, according to a new report.
5. CCRIF looking at catastrophe bonds and collateralized reinsurance
   The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), the parametric insurance and catastrophe risk pooling facility for Caribbean countries, is considering catastrophe bonds and collateralized reinsurance as part of its risk transfer, according to its CEO.
6. First African parametric catastrophe insurance pool launches
   The first catastrophe insurance pool for African nations has been launched today by African Risk Capacity (ARC), a specialised agency set-up by the African Union to help member states become more resilient to extreme weather events and to protect food insecure populations. Also read: Willis brokered reinsurance for first African catastrophe insurance pool.
7. What if alternative capital was indistinguishable from traditional reinsurance?
   The capital markets involvement in reinsurance is often referred to as convergence, but what happens when alternative reinsurance capital becomes sufficiently similar to traditional reinsurance so as to be indistinguishable from it?
8. S&P highlights complexity in Aozora Re Japan typhoon catastrophe bond
   More details have come to light on one of the recent catastrophe bond transactions to launch, the $100m Aozora Re Ltd. (Series 2014-1) Japanese typhoon cat bond from primary Japanese insurer sponsors Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance.
9. Secondary cat bond market supply and demand more balanced in April
   The increase in primary catastrophe bond market issuance in April, helped by almost $1 billion of new bonds issued and a pipeline containing more than $2 billion by the end of the month, helped to balance supply and demand in the secondary market.
10. Royal London in £1 billion longevity reinsurance deal with RGA Re
    Royal London, the largest mutual life insurance and pensions provider in the UK, has announced the completion of a longevity reinsurance transaction which saw it transfer approximately £1 billion of longevity risk to RGA International Reinsurance Company Ltd.

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.

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Q1 2014 Catastrophe Bond & ILS Market Report – A Record Quarter

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This report reviews the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market at the end of the first-quarter of 2014, looking at the new risk capital issued and the composition of the transactions completed during Q1 2014. Download your copy here.