Best of Artemis, week ending 31st August 2014

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 31st August 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 31st August 2014:

1. Insured loss estimates from Napa, California earthquake range from $500m to $2.1 billion
   The first to issue an insurance industry loss estimate for the Napa quake was risk modeller EQECAT with $500m to $1 billion. Next, was Kinetic Analysis Corporation at up to $2.1 billion and then later in the week the Credit Suisse ILS team with an insured loss estimate of $1.5 billion.

2. Weather derivatives trading unit complements Munich Re: S&P
   The world’s largest reinsurance firm Munich Re’s U.S. weather derivatives and energy commodities trading unit Munich Re Trading LLC complements the reinsurers core operations and is highly strategic to its parent, according to S&P.

3. Global reinsurance profits down, outlook still negative: Fitch
   The first-half of 2014 saw reduced profitability in the global reinsurance sector, according to Fitch Ratings, but while still profitable the results show deteriorating underwriting returns, as higher non-cat losses and underlying loss ratios began to bite.

4. Hedge fund reinsurers ‘not a new business model’, says A.M. Best
   The hedge fund backed reinsurance mode which seeks to leverage premium inflows as investment capital in hedge fund strategies in an attempt to outperform on the asset-side, is not treated as a new business model by rating agency A.M. Best.

5. Reinsurance opportunity in sovereign catastrophe risk financing: S&P
   Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s highlights the opportunity for insurance, reinsurance and the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market to work with governments to provide and support sovereign catastrophe and disaster risk financing tools.

6. Delta Lloyd in EUR 12 billion index-based longevity swap with RGA Re
   Dutch insurance, pensions and investments firm Delta Lloyd has entered into an index-based longevity swap transaction covering €12 billion of its longevity reserves with Reinsurance Group of America.

7. A leaderboard of catastrophe bond and ILS issuance banks & brokers
   Key activities during issuance of a catastrophe bond or insurance-linked security (ILS) fall to the capital markets divisions of global reinsurance brokers, reinsurers and specialist investment bank units in arranging, structuring and marketing ILS deals. We launched a leaderboard to help you track which firms are most prolific.

8. Positive for ILS investing: McKinsey says alternatives to keep growing
   One of the factors that is responsible for assisting the rapid growth of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance-linked investments market in recent years is global investors continuing shift towards alternative asset classes.

9. Alternative reinsurance capital to fuel M&A deal-making: Fitch
   Mergers and acquisitions seem firmly in the reinsurance markets future with excess capital, growing competition and the increasing availability of alternative reinsurance capital seen as a source of fuel for the M&A deal-making fire, according to Fitch Ratings.

10. ILS funds return average 0.40% in July, private ILS led the way
    The average return of the insurance-linked securities (ILS), reinsurance linked investment and pure catastrophe bond fund market was slightly improved in July, at 0.40%, but the gap between pure cat bond and funds investing in private ILS is widening.

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 17 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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Q2 2014 Catastrophe Bond & ILS Market Report – The Biggest Quarter, The Biggest Catastrophe Bond

We’ve now published our Q2 2014 catastrophe bond & ILS market report.

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