Best of Artemis, week ending 8th December 2019

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 8th December 2019, 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 updatesor get our email alerts for every article we publish.

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Ten most read articles on Artemis.bm, week ending 8th December 2019:

1. Have reinsurers lost their pricing power?
   Reinsurance pricing is often put down to relatively simplistic factors related to supply (of capital) and demand (for protection). But when it comes to major reinsurers there are other levers, although right now they don’t seem to be pulling them.
2. Hagibis hammers some private ILS positions in October
   It’s becoming clear that typhoon Hagibis’ impacts in Japan have hammered the performance of some private insurance-linked securities (ILS) positions in October and this could be sufficient to overshadow what has been another positive month for the catastrophe bond market.
3. Reinsurers glory days are over, as dependence on ILS increases: A.M. Best
   Global reinsurance market conditions are said to be improving by rating agency A.M. Best, who maintains a stable outlook on the sector, but sees traditional reinsurance capital becoming increasingly dependent on third-party sources of capacity and ILS.
4. Buffer tables, collateral lock-up, capital efficiency = the biggest issues in ILS
   The biggest issues facing the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market today, all surround the terms and contractual language related to collateral lock-up and commutations, while loss buffer tables have been seen to cause particular problems as they are often too simplistic, speakers said at an event yesterday.
5. Aeolus gets $102.85m investment from Blackstone multi-strat fund
   Aeolus Capital Management Ltd., the Bermuda based reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) focused investment fund manager, took an allocation amounting to roughly $102.85 million from asset management giant Blackstone earlier this year.
6. GrainCorp set for pay-out from 10-year drought derivative contract: Report
   According to a media report, Australian agribusiness giant GrainCorp looks to be eligible to claim as much as AU $57.3 million in a pay-out under the 10-year risk transfer arrangement it entered into this year that protects it against grain production variability, particularly from drought.
7. Swiss Re’s reinsurance sidecar Sector Re nears $1.1bn in size
   Global reinsurance company Swiss Re has significantly increased its use of alternative or third-party investor capital within its collateralised retrocessional reinsurance sidecar vehicle Sector Re Ltd., taking the vehicles total assets to close to $1.1 billion this year.
8. Gap between best & worst performing ILS fund nears 10% in October
   The broad diversity within the insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund market became very apparent in October 2019, as the impacts of catastrophe losses from Hagibis drove the gap between best and worst performing ILS fund to almost 10%.
9. Philippines seeks reinsurance to cover $19.6bn of state assets & infrastructure
   The government of the Philippines continues to expand its natural catastrophe related insurance and risk transfer provisions, with the latest step being a roughly US $19.6 billion cover for certain state assets, for which it is now seeking private market reinsurance protection.
10. Investors seek “reinsurance pricing story” (but it’s already baked into shares)
    Investors in traditional reinsurance companies are anticipating that the end of year renewals will reveal a “reinsurance pricing story” and this has already been baked into share prices, meaning reinsurers that fail to hold out on rates could risk disappointing their shareholders.

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 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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