Best of Artemis, week ending 20th November 2016

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 20th November 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.

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Ten most viewed articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 20th November 2016:

1. Reinsurance to pay for some of NZ quakes, factors could complicate
   Reinsurance capital looks set to pay for some of the damage caused by this weeks earthquakes in New Zealand, with local insurers having low deductibles and the EQC likely to call on its program as well, but questions of how many events have occurred could complicate matters, as could supply chain interruption.

2. Argo Group buys Ariel Re for $235 million, advances strategic plan
   Bermuda domiciled specialty insurance and reinsurance provider, Argo Group International Holdings, Ltd., has announced the acquisition of re/insurer Ariel Re for approximately $235 million in cash as it looks to advance its strategic plan.

3. Swiss Re backs MiCRO catastrophe index business interruption cover
   The Microinsurance Catastrophe Risk Organisation (MiCRO), a Barbados based reinsurance company that leverages the capital efficiency of the international reinsurance market alongside donor capital, has launched a novel index-linked business interruption policy.

4. Microsoft benefits from Allianz & Nephila wind farm revenue swap
   Microsoft Corp. has revealed that it was a buyer in the first transaction to use the innovative wind farm weather hedging revenue product created by Allianz Risk Transfer (ART) with the help of Nephila Capital.

5. Iris Re to report net asset value, as Cartesian opts for ILS transparency
   Bermuda-based Iris Reinsurance Ltd., an index and parametric focused third-party capitalised collateralised insurance and reinsurance company, is to report its modelled net asset value on a regular basis as its manager Cartesian Re opts for transparency in ILS.

6. ILS & Insurtech evolution brings role of broker into question: Speakers
   As the convergence space continues to evolve and traditional and alternative reinsurance capital and structures become more integrated, along with the rise of technology in the sector, market leaders have questioned what this could mean for intermediaries and their role in the value chain.

7. Jubilee oil field FPSO insured loss to rise on continued shutdown
   The loss that will fall to the insurance and reinsurance market due to the damaged turret on the Kwame Nkrumah FPSO (floating production storage and offloading) operating on the Jubilee oil field, Ghana, is set to rise, as the FPSO will remain shutdown to production well into 2017.

8. No direct capital requirement for catastrophe risk in BCAR update: A.M. Best
   Rating agency A.M. Best has changed a proposed update to its Best’s Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR) that would have seen catastrophe risk become a direct capital requirement and has also reduced the emphasis on catastrophe tail risks in the capital adequacy calculation.

9. Efficient reinsurance helps Fairfax mitigate OdysseyRe cat loss impact
   Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, the parent company of specialty insurer and reinsurer OdysseyRe, in its Q3 earnings release, has highlighted the benefits that efficient reinsurance capital provides in mitigating the impact of catastrophe losses on OdysseyRe’s operations.

10. Pensions & sovereigns waiting for right time to upsize ILS allocations
    Some of the larger pension funds and sovereign wealth funds that are already investing in insurance-linked securities (ILS) and other reinsurance linked investments are keen to increase their allocations to the space, but waiting for the right time.

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 26 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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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.