Best of Artemis, week ending 20th May 2018

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 20th May 2018, 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 viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 20th May 2018:

1. SCOR launches the first UK cat bond, with $300m Atlas Capital UK 2018 PLC
   French headquartered global reinsurance firm SCOR has returned to the capital market for its first catastrophe bond in over two years and has switched its preferred ILS domicile to the UK, leveraging the new regulatory regime there to sponsor a $300 million Atlas Capital UK 2018 PLC (Series 2018 ISPV 1) transaction.

2. Cumulative catastrophe bond issuance passes $100bn
   The catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market has reached a new milestone, as strong demand from investors and sponsors has taken 2018 issuance to near $7 billion already, lifting total cumulative issuance since the market began passed the $100 billion mark, according to Artemis’ data on the market.

3. ILS & reinsurance are Hedge Funds 2.0, says Future Fund CIO
   The world of hedge funds and alternative investment strategies is moving fast and the Chief Investment Officer of massive A$166 billion Australian sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, is happiest allocating to what he terms Hedge Funds 2.0, a categorisation that ILS and reinsurance fits into.

4. AXA-XL ceded reinsurance & alternative capital to be led by van Zanden
   In preparing for its acquisition by French insurance giant AXA, Bermudian insurance and reinsurance firm XL Group has laid out some of the managerial changes to expect during the transition, but has highlighted that responsibility for ceded reinsurance and alternative capital will remain with Mark van Zanden.

5. Aon to retire Benfield and Risk Solutions names as it looks to simplify
   Global insurance and reinsurance broker Aon is to retire the long-used Aon Benfield and Aon Risk Solutions brand, as it looks to consolidate its service offering under a simplified, single brand as Aon.

6. New speakers revealed for our upcoming ILS Asia 2018 conference
   It’s our pleasure to announce a number of new speakers from Aon Securities, Mt. Logan Re, NatCatDAX and DBS Bank, for the upcoming third instalment of our annual insurance-linked securities (ILS) conference in Asia, ILS Asia 2018.

7. TWIA’s reinsurance to grow 24% to $2.6bn, as Harvey loss rises
   The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) is set to procure a new $1.4 billion layer of reinsurance and catastrophe bonds in 2018, taking its overall private market program to $2.6 billion, a 24% increase from the size of its program a year ago, helping to cover a funding gap created by increasing hurricane Harvey losses.

8. Zurich in £2bn longevity swap with National Grid
   Insurer Zurich has completed its largest ever longevity swap arrangement, an intermediated arrangement that covers more than £2 billion of pensioner liabilities for the UK’s National Grid Electricity Group of the Electricity Supply Pension Scheme (ESPS).

9. Tangency raises $50m, starts deploying quota share focused ILS strategy
   Tangency Capital Ltd., a recently launched insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment venture that has a focus on quota shares, has raised its first $50 million from a seed investor and begun to deploy the capital following its “differentiated” quota share focused investment strategy.

10. Congo Ebola outbreak may be an eligible event for pandemic cat bond & swaps
    The worsening outbreak of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo may be considered an eligible event under the terms of the Class B pandemic swaps and pandemic catastrophe bonds that were issued by the World Bank to support the financing of the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF).

This is not every article published on Artemis during the last week, just the most popular, some of which were published over a week ago. There were 27 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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