Best of Artemis, week ending 8th April 2018

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 8th April 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 8th April 2018:

1. FEMA confirms intention to sponsor NFIP flood cat bond at July 1st
   The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has confirmed its intention to enter the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market for the first time for a mid-year 2018 transfer of risk from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), to secure capital markets backed source of flood reinsurance using a catastrophe bond.

2. Catastrophe bond market buoyant in record Q1 2018: Report
   Our latest quarterly report on the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market is now available to download. The report, ‘Q1 2018 – Market buoyant despite 2017 catastrophes’, analyses a record first-quarter featuring $4.24 billion of issuance, which drove the outstanding market to a new high at $32.83 billion.

3. 2018 hurricane forecasts predict slightly above average season
   Early forecasts of Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane and tropical storm activity for 2018 are pointing towards a year with a slightly above average number of named storms and hurricanes, while landfall probabilities are also seen as slightly above normal as well.

4. Hopes for meaningful reinsurance rate increases dashed: Willis Re
   Any hopes that meaningful reinsurance rate increases might have been available in 2018, to help re/insurers and ILS players offset the heavy losses suffered in 2017, have been dashed by another broadly flat reinsurance renewal at April 1st, according to broker Willis Re.

5. Swiss Re forecasts reinsurance growth, says SoftBank limited to 10%
   Reinsurance firm Swiss Re said this morning that it anticipates that reinsurance premiums will grow at a rate of 5% per-annum over the next five years at least, providing it with plenty of opportunity to put its strategy to work, but despite that opportunity a deal with a major investor remains under discussion.

6. Stone Ridge ILS assets return to growth, rising 10% to $6.72bn
   Insurance-linked security (ILS) and reinsurance linked asset growth returned at investment manager Stone Ridge Asset Management’s mutual ILS funds in the last reported quarter, as its strategies put major losses from hurricanes and other catastrophes behind them and grew 10%, taking the firms ILS assets under management to $6.72 billion.

7. Hudson’s Bay hacking designated as PCS Global Cyber loss event
   A recent cyber hack attack on U.S. retailer Hudson’s Bay, owner of the Saks and Lord & Taylor store brands, is expected to cause a loss to insurance and perhaps reinsurance interests and as a result Property Claim Services (PCS) has designated the event and will produce an estimate of insured losses for it.

8. State Farm sponsors new $300m Merna Re quake cat bond for 2018
   U.S. primary insurer State Farm has been back in the catastrophe bond market in recent weeks, with a privately syndicated Merna Re Ltd. (Series 2018-1) cat bond transaction that successfully secured the firm a $300 million source of fully-collateralized U.S. earthquake reinsurance protection.

9. Ontario Teachers’ maintains large ILS relationships with Nephila & RenRe
   The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), the largest private pension fund in Canada with around $189.5 billion of assets under management, has maintained its key ILS investment relationships with Nephila Capital and RenaissanceRe through the last year.

10. ADB hires Kessler from Swiss Re for disaster risk insurance role
    The Asian Development Bank (ADB), a financial institution that supports economic growth and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, has hired Thomas Kessler, a long-time Swiss Re executive, into a newly created role focused on disaster risk insurance and financing.

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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